#AmWriting

the lovely folk of Greenock Writers Club

We had the pleasure of visiting the Greenock Writer's Club the other night to give a talk on the nicely broad theme of "Fantastic Fiction".

We have always tried to use local history and heritage as a jumping off point for fantastic stories; our original grandiose plan when we started collecting 13 years ago was to help create a mythology for the area, starting the story of Inverclyde hundreds of years before the arrival of the industries that we continue to mourn. 

It was a great opportunity for us to showcase some of the papers and stories of questionable local antiquarian Sir Douglas Rhodes, an avid collector of curios and "unusual" news items and stories. We have printed a few pieces on the blog over the last year, some directly quoted from his papers, others written by us, inspired by something from his collection. 

We read a few of Sir Glen's pieces out on the night, including this wee fragment which has actually just been adapted for a graphic novel being produced as part of the Heritage Lottery Scotland funded Identity project.

Visiting the club reminded us as well just how many interesting and creative groups and people there are in the area, just getting on with doing what they enjoy. For lovers of old photos, there's the Inverclyde Old and New Blog or Greenock in Old Photos Facebook Page. If you like your old places even more ancient, check out Inverclyde Visual Archaeology Project. We hear there's a number of very interesting arts projects potentially lined up for Greenock Sugar Sheds, Absent Voices is one of them. Arts for Inverclyde gives a real flavour of just how many artists there are working in all fields across our community.

Sometimes groups are quite happy working the way they work, and that's great, but it's always worth remembering that there are support and funding opportunities out there if you are part of a group who would like to develop new ideas or involve even more people. CVS Inverclyde ran a funders fayre in Port Glasgow last week with funders along from a whole range of organisations including The Robertson Trust, Big Lottery, Heritage Lottery Scotland and Lloyds TSB Foundation, all keen to invest locally.

These funders don't just fund Inverclyde of course, there's opportunities for all, provided you can meet the criteria set by the funder, it's always really important to check out what funders will consider; however, in Inverclyde we do get less than our per-capita share of Lottery funding; that is, proportionately, we spend more on the gambling aspect of the Lottery than we get back in good cause funding. 

Maybe you've got an idea that could even up those odds...

arctic rope, yesterday