Posts Tagged ‘Omniversity of Manchester’

Short Story Writing Workshop

Thursday, May 3rd, 2012

Short Story

Title: Short Story Writing Workshop
Location: MadLab
Description: This course is about the short story.
Date: 06-11-2012
Start Time: 19:00
End Time: 21:00
Booking: Sign up here

 

 

 

 

 

 

This course is held on Tuesday evenings (11 Sept, 9th Oct, 6th Nov, 11th Dec, 8th Jan, 12th Feb)

Over the course of six workshops you’ll get a handle on the predominant narrative structures used by short story writers, and learn how to implement them in your own work. Completing set writing tasks between workshops – and receiving structured, peer-driven feedback – you’ll develop three short stories to completion. You’ll receive tailored advice on how to shape the story and how to improve characterisation, dialogue and narrative voice. Comma Press, one of the UK’s leading publishers of short fiction, is currently looking for new authors for its Reveal anthology and it’s hoped that this course will unearth and develop contenders for this showcase.

What you need to be familiar with

You don’t necessarily need any practical experience of writing stories, nor of supervised creative writing of any kind, but it’s important that you have an interest in – and enthusiasm for – the short story form. To get the most from the course you should be prepared do some background reading, undertake writing tasks between sessions, read the work of others on the course prior to each session, offer tactful – yet frank – feedback and receive constructive criticism on your own work. The course isn’t geared towards any particular sub-genre within the short story form – be it literary fiction, sci-fi or horror – though we’ll be looking at techniques applicable to all these genres.

This isn’t a course devised to help you write a novel, a novella, poetry, micro-fiction or biography – it’s all about the short story, which presents its own specific demands and opportunities to writers. Short stories typically weigh-in at somewhere between 1500 and 8000 words long – for the purpose of this course we will be looking at stories up to 5,000 words long.

Equipment you’ll need

  • Something to write with during sessions – pen and paper will do
  • Computer with internet access – to upload your work-in-progress to the online Dropbox or email the group
  • If you prefer to print out other people’s work to read prior to sessions (rather than reading from a screen), you’ll need to do so at your own expense

Recommended reading list

To prepare for the course, please read these short stories. All the stories are available online one way or another, so it is not required to purchase them.
Short Story Writing Workshop reading list

Further information

Short Story Writing Workshop course syllabus

Costs and times

£150 for six evening sessions over a six-month month period, held on Tuesday evenings (11 Sept, 9th Oct, 6th Nov, 11th Dec, 8th Jan, 12th Feb).

Tutor biography

Zoe Lambert is a Manchester-based short story writer. Her critically acclaimed collection, The War Tour, was published by Comma Press in 2011 and was shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize for the Short Story. She has a PhD from Manchester Metropolitan University and has lectured in creative writing for a number of years.

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Intermediate WordPress

Wednesday, April 18th, 2012

Intermediate WordPress

Title: Intermediate WordPress
Location: MadLab
Description: A hands-on intermediate course to polish your WordPress website
Start Date: 20-10-2012
Start Time: 10:00
End Time: 16:30
End Date: 21-10-2012
Booking: Sign up here

 

 

 

 

WordPress co-founder Mike Little will be leading our two-day course.

WordPress is the publishing platform of choice for more than 73 million websites and blogs – including some of the most high-profile sites in the world. It has a Content Management System (CMS) market share of 54%.

This intermediate course takes your WordPress site to the next level. You will learn how to thoroughly customise themes, find the right plugin for your needs, understand the different requirements for mobile platforms (smartphones/ tablets) and unleash the full power and potential of this CMS platform. Mike’s hands-on course will teach you WordPress best practice, SEO strategies, security tips and caching techniques. You’ll get started with e-commerce and find out about little-known and useful features of WordPress – and all from the man who helped create it in the first place.

Who will benefit from this class?

You may already have a WordPress site or two and you want yours to be better than the rest.

You may be contemplating spending several thousand pounds on hiring a developer/ designer for your new company website.

Total beginners should go on our WordPress for Beginners course.

What you need to be familiar with

If you want to work on an existing WordPress site you are more than welcome, but we will provide a pre-installed site for up to a month for all attendees.

This course is aimed at those who’ve already got to grips with the WordPress CMS. You’ll don’t need any programming experience, but a little CSS knowledge is useful.

Course syllabus

Day one

  1. Introduction To WordPress: What is WordPress? A little history
  2. Recap of the WordPress basics: Posts, pages and all that jazz
  3. Settings in depth: More ways to configure your site
  4. Advanced posts and pages: Featured images, the kitchen sink, paging and more
  5. Exercise: Getting to grips with the WordPress Editor
  6. The Image Editor: Make your own thumbnails
  7. Themes, Widgets and Menus in depth: Learning the building blocks
  8. CSS introduction: An overview and some useful tools
  9. Pulling it all together: Improving the look of your site
  10. Exercise: Customising your theme with CSS

Day two

  1. Security: Hosting, plugins and good habits
  2. Caching: Make your site fly!
  3. Exercise: Security and caching plugins
  4. SEO – an overview: The strange art of Search Engine Optimisation
  5. Anti-spam techniques: Akismet and beyond
  6. Jetpack in depth: Juicy goodness form WordPress.com
  7. Exercise: Getting to know Jetpack
  8. E-commerce – an overview: An intro to selling your stuff
  9. More useful tools and plugins

Equipment you’ll need

  • Please bring a laptop computer with Windows, Linux or Mac OS installed. You will not need to install any software, but you should have a modern web browser. Our preference is for the latest version of Firefox or Google Chrome, but the latest Internet Explorer or Opera will be fine too
  • For part of the course you will need Firefox or Google Chrome
  • You may want to bring some sample images that you will be able to upload to your website as the course progresses
  • If you feel more comfortable using an external mouse, please bring one with you

Learning outcomes

After completing the class, you will have:

  • In-depth knowledge about WordPress configuration
  • A suite of plugins to enhance your site to your needs
  • The ability to configure WordPress to your preferences
  • The ability to use industry-standard developer tools
  • An understanding of site security and Search Engine Optimisation
  • Practical knowledge of advanced plugins

This is a very practical hands-on course where you will complete exercises, ask questions and engage in discussions to make the most of the time.

Costs and times

The course costs £200. You will receive an electronic copy of the teaching materials, software, and programmes. You will also receive one month’sfree hosting courtesy of MadLab to test and refine your site. Lunch and refreshments are provided.

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Advanced CSS

Wednesday, April 4th, 2012

Advanced CSS

Title: Advanced CSS at the Omniversity
Location: MadLab
Description: Advanced CSS and HTML topics takes HTML and CSS further, looking at advanced topics such as multi-column layouts, cross-browser issues, CSS sprites, faux columns, optimizing layouts for different devices such as mobile phones, CSS3 transitions, transforms and animation, HTML5 video and forms, and more.
Date: 03-11-2012
Start Time: 10:00
End Time: 16:30
Booking: Sign up here






Advanced CSS will take you further in your knowledge of CSS. In this course you’ll look at a range of subjects including multi-column layouts, flexbox, advanced web font usage, CSS sprites, advanced positioning, responsive web design, CSS3 transitions, transforms and animation – and more.

This course is suitable for students and others wishing to gain new skills, as well as web designers and developers that want to update their skills to modern best practices and get a feel for what CSS3 has to offer.

What you need to be familiar with

Advanced CSS assumes that you are already familiar with HTML and CSS basics, and want to go further, learning advanced techniques to add to your web design toolkit, and becoming familiar with cutting edge CSS3 features.

If you are a beginner to CSS, we would advise you to attend our CSS Basics course first.

Learning outcomes

After completing the class, you will have learned:

  • A knowledge of advanced CSS techniques
  • An understanding of several CSS3 features
  • A thirst to explore further, and experiment with modern technologies

Equipment you’ll need

  • Yourself. Refreshments will be provided.
  • A laptop of some kind. Mac, Windows or Linux is fine.
  • A decent text editor – this is all you need to build web pages. We recommend:

    Note: You can use an expensive web creator tool like Dreamweaver, should you have one installed. But expect to use it to edit code, not drag and drop.

  • A graphics package – we will be talking a little bit about graphics for the web, as far as different formats, and resizing images are concerned. It would make sense for you to have a graphics package available. We recommend:
  • The latest available web browsers (all free). We’d recommend:
  • An FTP program, which is used to upload your web page files up to the web, so they can then be viewed by others on the web. We recommend:

Suggested preparatory work

  • Install the software described above on your laptop
  • Bring some text and images you’d like to put on a web page. It could be your CV, a short story you’ve written, information on your favourite band or pictures of your family
  • Start reading up on web development. A good place to start for beginners is the Opera web standards curriculum

Costs and times

The course costs £100. You will receive an electronic copy of the teaching materials, software, and programmes. You will also receive free hosting courtesy of MadLab to test and refine your site. Lunch and refreshments are provided.

Further information

Advanced CSS course syllabus

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Short Story Writing Workshop

Saturday, March 24th, 2012

Short Story

Title: Short Story Writing Workshop
Location: MadLab
Description: This course is about the short story.
Date: 11-09-2012
Start Time: 19:00
End Time: 21:00
Bookings: Sign up here

This course is held on Tuesday evenings (11 Sept, 9th Oct, 6th Nov, 11th Dec, 8th Jan, 12th Feb)

 

 

 

Over the course of six workshops you’ll get a handle on the predominant narrative structures used by short story writers, and learn how to implement them in your own work. Completing set writing tasks between workshops – and receiving structured, peer-driven feedback – you’ll develop three short stories to completion. You’ll receive tailored advice on how to shape the story and how to improve characterisation, dialogue and narrative voice. Comma Press, one of the UK’s leading publishers of short fiction, is currently looking for new authors for its Reveal anthology and it’s hoped that this course will unearth and develop contenders for this showcase.

What you need to be familiar with

You don’t necessarily need any practical experience of writing stories, nor of supervised creative writing of any kind, but it’s important that you have an interest in – and enthusiasm for – the short story form. To get the most from the course you should be prepared do some background reading, undertake writing tasks between sessions, read the work of others on the course prior to each session, offer tactful – yet frank – feedback and receive constructive criticism on your own work. The course isn’t geared towards any particular sub-genre within the short story form – be it literary fiction, sci-fi or horror – though we’ll be looking at techniques applicable to all these genres.

This isn’t a course devised to help you write a novel, a novella, poetry, micro-fiction or biography – it’s all about the short story, which presents its own specific demands and opportunities to writers. Short stories typically weigh-in at somewhere between 1500 and 8000 words long – for the purpose of this course we will be looking at stories up to 5,000 words long.

Equipment you’ll need

  • Something to write with during sessions – pen and paper will do
  • Computer with internet access – to upload your work-in-progress to the online Dropbox or email the group
  • If you prefer to print out other people’s work to read prior to sessions (rather than reading from a screen), you’ll need to do so at your own expense

Recommended reading list

To prepare for the course, please read these short stories. All the stories are available online one way or another, so it is not required to purchase them.
Short Story Writing Workshop reading list

Further information

Short Story Writing Workshop course syllabus

Costs and times

£150 for six evening sessions over a six-month month period, held on Tuesday evenings (11 Sept, 9th Oct, 6th Nov, 11th Dec, 8th Jan, 12th Feb).

Tutor biography

Zoe Lambert is a Manchester-based short story writer. Her critically acclaimed collection, The War Tour, was published by Comma Press in 2011 and was shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize for the Short Story. She has a PhD from Manchester Metropolitan University and has lectured in creative writing for a number of years.

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Poetry Writing Workshop

Saturday, March 24th, 2012

Short Story

Title: Poetry Writing Workshop
Location: MadLab
Description: This course is about poetry.
Date: 8-10-2012
Start Time: 19:00
End Time: 21:00
Booking: Sign up here

 

This course takes place on Monday evenings  8th Oct, 12th Nov, 10th Dec, 7th Jan, 11th Feb, 11th Mar)

 

 

Over the course of six workshops, you’ll get a handle on the predominant styles, structures and types of voice used by poets and learn how to implement them in your own work. Completing set writing tasks between and during workshops – and receiving structured, peer-driven feedback – you’ll develop 12 poems to completion, with tailored advice on how to shape the story, and improve characterisation, dialogue and narrative voice.

What you need to be familiar with

You don’t necessarily need any practical experience of writing poetry, nor of supervised creative writing of any kind, but it’s important that you have an interest in – and enthusiasm for – contemporary (late 20th century to present-day) poetry. To get the most from the course you should be prepared do some background reading, undertake writing tasks between sessions, read the work of others on the course prior to each session, offer tactful – yet frank – feedback, and receive constructive criticism on your own work. The course isn’t geared towards any particular style of poetry – we’ll be looking at techniques applicable to a variety of genres.

Equipment you’ll need

  • Something to write with during sessions – pen and paper will do
  • Computer with internet access – to upload your work-in-progress to the online Dropbox or email the group
  • If you prefer to print out other people’s work to read prior to sessions (rather than reading from a screen), you’ll need to do so at your own expense

Recommended reading list

We might not necessarily use/read all of these poems during the workshops but they’re a good and diverse selection of contemporary poems for students to read before the sessions begin.
Poetry Writing Workshop reading list

Costs and times

£150 for six evening sessions over a six-month period, held on Monday evenings (10th Sept, 8th Oct, 12th Nov, 10th Dec 2012, 7th Jan, 11th Feb 2013).

Tutor biography

Gaia Holmes lives in Halifax. She is a part-time creative writing lecturer at the University of Huddersfield and freelance writer who works with schools, libraries and other community groups throughout the West Yorkshire region. In her spare time Gaia is a DJ for Phoenix FM, Calderdale’s community radio station. She also bangs and rattles a red tambourine at gigs and rehearsals with Sambalifax and squeezes an accordion with ‘Crow Hill Stompers’. Her second poetry collection, Lifting the Piano With One Hand, is due out with Comma Press in Autumn 2012.

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