As part of the MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester, we run a major module on "employability" called Applications: Publishing, Teaching & Other Stories. This core module considers the vocational and professional aspects of Creative Writing, looking beyond the university workshop to the world outside. It's a crucial part of the Master's degree. I see Creative Writing as a hybrid subject, which brings together practice-based, research-based and vocational forms of knowledge.
The module deals with three key strands in relation to employability:
- the dissemination of Creative Writing in public and professional spheres (e.g. the publication and performance of Creative Writing);
- other diverse ways in which Creative Writers subsist in the world (e.g. through portfolio careers, made up of teaching, journalism, editing, writing for professional briefs, etc.);
- the myriad related fields to which the transferable skills that Creative Writing develops can be applied.
These three strands might also be seen as concentric circles, moving from the immediate vocational context of the dissemination of Creative Writing, to professional contexts directly related to Creative Writing, to the much wider circle of professions which draw on the writing skills students have developed. We look at major and independent publishing, the role of literary agents, literary magazines and reviewing, performance contexts and techniques, writing for briefs, and so on. The module includes workshops, seminars, talks as well as guest speakers from the professional writing world.
I've been teaching the professional side of Creative Writing for twenty-five years now, and I've seen students go on to work in a myriad of different fields. In a literate economy, the value of writing well, reading critically, storytelling skills, imaginative use of language, communication skills can hardly be overestimated. Jobs and roles I've seen students go into after studying Creative Writing have included (among many more): novelist, short-story writer, poet, screenwriter, playwright, radio writer, speech writer, creative non-fiction writer, travel writer, memoirist, children's author, PhD student, academic, teacher (in all sorts of different contexts, and at all levels), tutor, publisher, performance poet, stand-up comedian, events manager, arts manager, festival manager, arts programme coordinator, literature development officer, public relations manager, human resources manager, advertiser, politician, journalist, literary magazine editor, commercial magazine editor, game designer, radio producer, radio presenter, voice-over artist, TV presenter, producer, web content creator, publicist, marketer, film producer, accountant, literary agent, editor, copy editor, commissioning editor, copywriter, web designer, solicitor (through a conversion course), doctor (through a conversion course), civil servant, librarian, archivist, financial manager, administrator, counsellor, bookseller, actor, reviewer, arts organisation director ... and so on and so forth.
Recently, though, I've been thinking a lot about "employability," and about how we should perhaps understand the term much more broadly. Given the state of the world, I've been thinking about the other invaluable (yet more intangible) roles Creative Writing graduates often take up, whether as writers or in their lives as a whole. Ideally, employability shouldn't just be a matter of "training" for particular roles in the capitalist world; it might also be about changing those roles, dreaming up new ones, maybe even dreaming of changing the world itself (however slightly). After all, Creative Writing, by definition, encourages you to re-imagine the world, or to imagine new worlds. In that regard, I think employability in Creative Writing is also about roles that have never seemed more vital in our society - such as dreamer, idealist, utopianist, magical thinker, empath, mentor, radical, creative, artist, activist, communitarian, critical thinker, social critic, optimist, pessimist, optimistic-pessimist, pessimistic-optimist, visionary, prophet, poet, storyteller, "unacknowledged legislator of the world" (as Shelley puts it).
