Expansion of the Creative Café Project

I believe it is time now to see this project expand massively. Although hopefully a full-time manager will be employed eventually, much of the project’s success will depend on the hard work of volunteers. The work will be fun, however.

How can you help?

CaféLit

This is an e-zine and an annual publication that makes some money for the project and pays an editor. We want to improve the circulation. So we need more hits on the sites and more people buying the book – available as a paperback or on Kindle. Anyone like to push that for us?   On one of our sites we have Google ads. On the other we would like to sell appropriate advertising directly. Could you advertise with us? Do you know anyone else who could? See our advertising rates.  

And don’t forget to submit! See submission guidelines.         

Finding more cafés

Oh, dear oh dear. It’s a hard life. That just might mean trying out more cafés in your local area and deciding whether they are already creative cafés (see definition) or have the potential to become them.  Even better if you can email admin@creativecafeproject.co.uk with the copy for the web site.

Review a Creative Café

Write a review about a creative café or about a café that’s about to join the Creative Café Project. We’ll post it on this blog and link it to the café on the Creative Café web site. You can include a by-line and a link to your own site(s).    

Developing creative cafés

This could mean helping a café to become a creative café or help existing creative cafés become better ones.

Be a creative practitioner at a creative café

See my previous blog post on Writers in Residence. Or, if you are an artist could you arrange with the café to display and / or sell your work? If you are a musician and the café has an entertainments license could you busk there for a few hours? Sell your CDs? Give out leaflets?

Run a literary salon there

See details about this in this post on this blog.

Any other bright ideas?

Please share!   Contact admin@creativecafeproject.co.uk

The Janus Report for the Creative Café 2011 / 2012

2011 has seen a handful of new cafes come into the project but even more importantly there are another half dozen people out there looking for and managing to identify them. Several writers are getting interested and I’ve spoken to quite a few about setting up as a writer in residence in a café.  The most popular ideas are:

·         Running a creative writing workshop

·         Holding a creative writing clinic

·         Just writing

·         Selling and signing books

Unfortunately we didn’t get the funding we applied for but some of the writers and cafes have found innovative ways around that.   

I’ve actually enjoyed visiting one or two new cafés and chatting to the owners / managers about the project.  

CaféLit is trundling along nicely and bringing in come good stories. I’ve almost finished the copy edit on The Best of 2011 and although I’d read all of the stories before, I certainly enjoyed reading them again.  I think we achieved what we set out to do – provide stories that go with a cuppa in a café. I’m delighted with how well the drinks match the texts.  So thanks go to Debz Hobbs-Wyatt for her excellent editing.   

For 2012 I’m keen to get more cafés, writers and other creative practitioners involved. I’m keen to get CaféLit into the cafés.  I’m toying with story cards and story pamphlets also. I’m hoping to fund this by selling advertising. Also, I’d like to send attractive notices to the cafés alerting customers to the Kindle version of The Best of and to the online versions.  

I’ve started a Chip-in campaign to raise funds to cover the cost of having a logo designed and getting some stationery printed. Gradually, we’ll start producing merchandise that the cafés and their customers can buy.