Announcement: BRG relaunch

A new direction for a new age.

Greetings from a voice in the mists. As I’m sure has been the hottest topic of conversation around dinner tables for many months now, Blue, Red and Grey has been very quiet of late. The reasons for that have been pretty simple — time.

BRG was set up last year when my previous venture, Wales Arts Review, breathed its last, and left me with something of a void when it came to writing about art and culture. It got off to a flying start, and there was so much going on I was publishing a piece a day. People very much responded to my take on the structures and power systems at play in Wales’ vibrant but battered cultural sector. But problems became apparent when a perceived clash emerged between my writing on BRG and my role as presenter of the Arts Show for BBC Radio Wales (interestingly, what happened to Evan Davis recently is what happened to me — and my sentiments are in line with Evan’s).

So, I was left with a substack that had a vague interest in criticism, creative writing, and my own preoccupation with stuff around storytelling. And a substack without a clear mission statement is likely to waver and flag. Looks like it did just that.

And when I opened a record shop in 2024, the time I was able to dedicate to writing a regular newsletter was zero hours and zero minutes.

But now…

Earlier this year I set about scratching an itch that had been there since parting ways with the Creative Writing department at Cardiff University, a place I loved, where I led creative writing workshops for undergrads for over four years alongside my PhD research. For me, writing workshops are about discussions, trading ideas, finding solutions. And let’s not make any bones about it: I liked the company. Whoever said being a writer means sitting in a room for long periods of time on your own talking toy for imaginary friends was not wrong.

But creative writing workshops are, in essence, about a room of like-minded people all chipping away to unveil the enduring mysteries of the writing craft. I’ve been writing in the last year (of course) but I have badly missed the discussion groups. So, I have set up a writing workshop in my record shop in Monmouth.

This relaunch of Blue, Red and Grey will see my substack focus on these new workshops. In fact, the new BRG is going to be a workshop in itself, where subscribers will come with me as we look at the building blocks of story writing, the connective tissue between fiction and non-fiction, the writer’s voice, and, most importantly, the journey from idea to manuscript. It will supplement and spin off the in-person writing workshop that takes place fortnightly in my record shop in Monmouth, and anybody signing up to those workshops will have free access to everything on this substack.

What you will get for subscribing to the BRG writing community is regular discussion posts about specific elements of storytelling where I will draw attention to moments in literature, film, theatre etc. that I think are interesting and useful to anyone looking to answer the questions raised in their own writing.

It’s where you can read why the three act structure is so important to Jaws; how Adolescence could have been so much better; and why Katherine Mansfield is probably the most important writer of the twentieth century (to writers).

[now there’s some teasers for you]

I will also set some writing prompts to help those who feel they may benefit from them — prompts that will always have an aim of getting you through a problem, or introducing you to new perspectives on the challenges of your work.

And there will be a forum that will hopefully build over time, where subscribers can bring their own thoughts and ideas to the table.

There will be regular posts for the free subscribers, but the bulk of the workshop-related stuff will be available to paid subscribers and members of the Monmouth Writing Workshop.

So, let’s get BRG back on the road.