
On Saturday 27 June 2026, WITTA presents a day-long event at Spike Island Gallery (Bristol) called WAWAW | Writing Art Writing Art Writing: When Language Becomes Material.
WAWAW will involve an afternoon exploring the intersections between art & writing with keynote presentations from artist-writers Katrina Palmer and Roy Claire Potter, followed by an evening salon of dinner accompanied by performances by Anna Barham, Lydia Davies and Sam Hasler.
Symposium: 1:30 – 5pm
Evening salon (with supper): 5:30 – 9:30pm
Links to book your places to follow soon.
The event emerges from our shared interests in the use of language as an affective and creative material for inhabiting, performing and developing ideas. WAWAW intends to create a space to consider what artist Mira Dayal has described as this often “placeless writing, writing that can’t settle anywhere, writing that hovers over or below a visual art practice” (2025). The event will explore and create space for different approaches to working with language as material and consider the myriad forms, influences, strategies, supports and concerns percolating this dynamic field of practice. We are hoping for a day of conversation, exchange and a sharing of references that will help to energise attendees, stimulate further discussion and maybe even recalibrate ways of working.
A WITTA exhibition of work by Spike Island artists, Make Write Write Make, will take place alongside the symposium. Make Write Write Make includes work by Jo Lathwood and Marianne Mulvey, Huma Mulji, Éilis Kirby, Amak Mahmoodian, Mary Hurrell, Young In Hong. The event is timed to coincide with the major artist's book fair BABE (Bristol Artist Book Event) and Spike Island’s exhibition by Nancy Lupo, Several Chickens Later, which will involve site-specific sculptural interventions that continue the artist’s interrogation of how material culture, language, collective fantasy and emotion can become manifest in form.
Following the event on 27 June, WITTA and Spike will be running a learning programme for practitioners working at the intersections of art and writing. This will involve a workshop-style group crit in person at Spike Island, followed by one-on-one mentoring for selected participants online. We will be announcing the leader of these sessions soon, as well as more details about how to register your interest, so please stay tuned.

Sign-up here to subscribe to our mailing list, to receive updates, forthcoming WITTA events, reading lists and new writing from our WITTA network.

WAWAW will involve an afternoon exploring the intersections between art and writing with keynote presentations from artist-writers Katrina Palmer and Roy Claire Potter, followed by an evening salon of dinner accompanied by performances by Anna Barham, Lydia Davies and Sam Hasler.

A new project supported by WITTA to explore experimental ways of making texts and images. The project is devised by Potato Press, formed of Lesley Guy, Kate Liston and Tom O’Sullivan and with contributions from Sarah Jackson and Leah Millar.

WITTAnights are a place for showing, reading, listening and trying things out.

Calling all artists who write, writers who art(!) and everything in between: tell us more about your work.

The WITTA podcast — hosted by Lizzie Lloyd and Kit Poulson — invites guests to reflect on why they do things with words, how they do things with words and what words allow them to do that other materials don’t.

Through various WITTA events, working with participants and collaborators within and beyond the university, questions have emerged.

This WITTAfilm was made from interviews and materials gathered at an informal week-long creative residency / experiment called WITTAverse.

In July 2023, WITTAverse happened. It was a week-long event which involved a range of artists, writers, composers, and students.

Members of the Ways of Writing in Art & Design (WoW) network, which is housed within the Visual Culture Research Group, have written and guest edited the first of two special issues of the Journal of Writing in Creative Practice.

Invitation to work as part of a research group devised by artists Beverley Carruthers and Wiebke Leister, which investigates contemporary modes of collaborative image-text-production.

Freya Dooley and Cinzia Mutigli’s ongoing collaboration spans writing, performance, sound and moving image.

In this inaugural event we invite Polly Barton and Daniela Cascella to discuss translation, relationships between art, writing and sound, and what it means to write between disciplines.

This evening of conversation with artist Katy Beinart, writer Lizzie Lloyd and curator Marianne Mulvey will consider their shared interests in socially engaged or participatory art projects.
WITTA (Writing In / To / Through Art) is the start of what I hope to become a fully fledged research group at UWE Bristol.

On Saturday 27 June 2026, WITTA presents a day-long event at Spike Island Gallery (Bristol) called WAWAW | Writing Art Writing Art Writing: When Language Becomes Material.
WAWAW will involve an afternoon exploring the intersections between art & writing with keynote presentations from artist-writers Katrina Palmer and Roy Claire Potter, followed by an evening salon of dinner accompanied by performances by Anna Barham, Lydia Davies and Sam Hasler.
Symposium: 1:30 – 5pm
Evening salon (with supper): 5:30 – 9:30pm
Links to book your places to follow soon.
The event emerges from our shared interests in the use of language as an affective and creative material for inhabiting, performing and developing ideas. WAWAW intends to create a space to consider what artist Mira Dayal has described as this often “placeless writing, writing that can’t settle anywhere, writing that hovers over or below a visual art practice” (2025). The event will explore and create space for different approaches to working with language as material and consider the myriad forms, influences, strategies, supports and concerns percolating this dynamic field of practice. We are hoping for a day of conversation, exchange and a sharing of references that will help to energise attendees, stimulate further discussion and maybe even recalibrate ways of working.
A WITTA exhibition of work by Spike Island artists, Make Write Write Make, will take place alongside the symposium. Make Write Write Make includes work by Jo Lathwood and Marianne Mulvey, Huma Mulji, Éilis Kirby, Amak Mahmoodian, Mary Hurrell, Young In Hong. The event is timed to coincide with the major artist's book fair BABE (Bristol Artist Book Event) and Spike Island’s exhibition by Nancy Lupo, Several Chickens Later, which will involve site-specific sculptural interventions that continue the artist’s interrogation of how material culture, language, collective fantasy and emotion can become manifest in form.
Following the event on 27 June, WITTA and Spike will be running a learning programme for practitioners working at the intersections of art and writing. This will involve a workshop-style group crit in person at Spike Island, followed by one-on-one mentoring for selected participants online. We will be announcing the leader of these sessions soon, as well as more details about how to register your interest, so please stay tuned.

Sign-up here to subscribe to our mailing list, to receive updates, forthcoming WITTA events, reading lists and new writing from our WITTA network.

WAWAW will involve an afternoon exploring the intersections between art and writing with keynote presentations from artist-writers Katrina Palmer and Roy Claire Potter, followed by an evening salon of dinner accompanied by performances by Anna Barham, Lydia Davies and Sam Hasler.

A new project supported by WITTA to explore experimental ways of making texts and images. The project is devised by Potato Press, formed of Lesley Guy, Kate Liston and Tom O’Sullivan and with contributions from Sarah Jackson and Leah Millar.

WITTAnights are a place for showing, reading, listening and trying things out.

Calling all artists who write, writers who art(!) and everything in between: tell us more about your work.

The WITTA podcast — hosted by Lizzie Lloyd and Kit Poulson — invites guests to reflect on why they do things with words, how they do things with words and what words allow them to do that other materials don’t.

Through various WITTA events, working with participants and collaborators within and beyond the university, questions have emerged.

This WITTAfilm was made from interviews and materials gathered at an informal week-long creative residency / experiment called WITTAverse.

In July 2023, WITTAverse happened. It was a week-long event which involved a range of artists, writers, composers, and students.

Members of the Ways of Writing in Art & Design (WoW) network, which is housed within the Visual Culture Research Group, have written and guest edited the first of two special issues of the Journal of Writing in Creative Practice.

Invitation to work as part of a research group devised by artists Beverley Carruthers and Wiebke Leister, which investigates contemporary modes of collaborative image-text-production.

Freya Dooley and Cinzia Mutigli’s ongoing collaboration spans writing, performance, sound and moving image.

In this inaugural event we invite Polly Barton and Daniela Cascella to discuss translation, relationships between art, writing and sound, and what it means to write between disciplines.

This evening of conversation with artist Katy Beinart, writer Lizzie Lloyd and curator Marianne Mulvey will consider their shared interests in socially engaged or participatory art projects.
WITTA (Writing In / To / Through Art) is the start of what I hope to become a fully fledged research group at UWE Bristol.