Next month, the AUT School of Communication Studies is flying UK-based Dark Angels to run three writing workshops (a three day residency and two one day options) in Auckland.
“I’m sharing this news with you as in my humble opinion it’d be heart-breaking if some of our talented creatives don’t partake,” says AUT CD Jane Berney.
“In 2016 I was one of six students at a Dark Angels Creative Writing Course in Spain. Yep. Spain.
“Dark Angels are the rain dancers of inspiration. Diviners of deeper thinking. To say the course was transformational is like suggesting that the Taj Mahal is a pretty palace.
“These British tutors are two of the founding Dark Angels. John Simmons and Jamie Jauncey have worked in the ad industry and are hell bent on bringing about the end of corporate jargon (aka ‘business bullshit’ – see the link to Guardian article below).
“Aglow, I wondered how Dark Angels could share their alchemy in the Antipodes. Their workshops offer a safe space for communications professionals and business writers to bring their true selves to the page, to become better writers. And to end the business bullshit.
“The Dark Angels ethos is based on one-on-one coaching; there are always two tutors, and the classes are small – six, 10, perhaps 12 people. Think ‘masterclass without the prima donnas’.
“There are now only a few places left on the one day workshops (when I say a few, I mean a handful if that).
“If agencies do one thing for their people (creatives, planners, strategists), do this. Infuse your creative life and soul with the elegiac experience of a Dark Angels workshop.”
“If agencies do one thing for their creatives, planners and strategists, do this. Infuse your creative life and soul with the elegiac experience of a Dark Angels workshop.”
The Dark Angels White Cloud (named as it’s the first time that the Dark Angels come to the Land of the Long White Cloud) are being held at the cool and authentic Tuesday Club in Auckland’s CBD. The dates for the one day workshops are Tuesday February 20 and Wednesday February 21.
The three-day residency Dark Angels course runs February 16, 17, 18 (Friday, Saturday, Sunday), and is based at an author’s residence in KareKare, on Auckland’s West Coast.
“Against the dramatic backdrop of KareKare, the programme will include short writing exercises and discussions with time for personal writing,” Berney says. “Participants draw on life experience, knowledge of the business world, and inspiration from being in a secluded and astonishing setting.”
The Dark Angels partnership was founded in 2004 by London-based novelist and copywriter John Simmons, Edinburgh-based copywriter, poet and playwright Stuart Delves and copywriter, musician and novelist Jamie Jauncey.
The three writers work both in the business world (as consultants, writers and facilitators) and as published authors of fiction and poetry.
Dark Angels takes its name from the book of the same title by John Simmons, with its nod to Milton’s Paradise Lost. “As Dark Angels,” Simmons writes, “we are neither those who have fallen, nor those who have ascended, but we occupy the fertile – if broken – ground in between.
“We find our creativity in our flawed human nature.”
Berney said: “I’ve been working on this project for over a year, and am as excited as a child on Christmas morning; and just a little green with envy.”
John Simmons and Jamie Jauncey arrive in Auckland on February 12.
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