More news about the Creative Café Project

More cafés needed

We’re always on the look-out for new cafés, so if you know of one, please do tell us about it.

How do you recognise a creative café? Have a look at a few on the site and you’ll probably get a sense of it. There are two main criteria:

1.      It must be first and foremost a great café

2.      It must have some sort of creative activity going on such as:

a.       Provide gallery space

b.      Have literature available for customers to read – newspapers, magazines, books

c.       Host a writing group

d.      Host  live music

e.       Host a reading group

f.       Provide informal meeting space

Each café is completely different in the way it operates and each one has a unique atmosphere. Do you know of a café that should join the scheme? If so, contact me here.

Writers in cafés

I’d like to get a few more interviews about this.  Here are the questions: 

What sort of writing do you do in cafés?

Why do you think writers like to work in cafés? 

Tell us something about a café where you like working (it’s okay not to name it if you would like to keep your venue secret – but if you are happy to name it we can add it to the list of cafés in the project.)

Has anything funny or interesting happened to you whilst you’ve been working in a café? 

Anything else you would like to add? (You can make up your own question if you like)

Email your answers here: It would also be great if you could send a photo of the café and even better still of you sitting in there writing.  Read more:    

Writers in residence

You spend set amounts of time at the café, perhaps spread over anything up to a year. You offer all of what is mentioned here. If doing this on a small scale, you may simply “camp” at the café for a day, chatting to people interested in reading, talking about your books, offering advice on writing and selling signed copies of your books. Read more:

Hold a literary salon

Ask the café to put on an evening or afternoon event at a set price. Charge your guests a little more – to cover all costs and perhaps reward you a little for your hard work. Invite all of your writerly / reader friends and fans.  Ask two or three people to come and talk about their work – probably best to ask published writers. Agree to pay them a fee and expenses. They can also bring copies of their work to sell.

My first salon was free of charge but I would like subsequent ones to make a profit for the project. I’m actually going to ask people to donate as they see fit. I’ll tell them what the actual costs are. 

You probably wouldn’t sell any of your own books here. But see my more detailed description of the literary salon on this blog. You can put one of your own into the book swap.       

Do this often enough and it will raise your profile anyway. Read more:  

As you can see, there are multiple ways you can get involved.