Joined Up Writers: How can the novel be a vehicle for community participation?

The title of this thesis addresses the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s (AHRC) call for research: “How can literature be thought to be a conversation with community?” (AHRC 2017).

As well as enquiring into the novel as a potential vehicle for community participation, there are two associated questions:
1. What is the role of the writer-facilitator?
2. What is the effect of introducing digital methods to a community writing practice that is traditionally non-digital?

The thesis defines the community novel in the context of the community arts movement in the UK (Owen Kelly 2023, François Matarasso 2021, for example). It argues for it as a culturally democratic form that uses multimodal, accessible and inclusive methods to engage with people who have little or no experience of creative writing. The research uses participatory action research (PAR) to establish the process of making a community novel with volunteers in a rural parish in south Cornwall. Collaborating with local residents, the research has established a replicable model of participation through which people with diverse skills and interests can contribute.

The longest study produced a prototype community novel, Trevow, which is the work of its participants. It was achieved over a period of 18 months, including an extension during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown of 2020. The thesis includes insights drawn from participation methods that arose when facilitation was unexpectedly forced online. Trevow demonstrates the viability of the community novel as a participatory form, with remediations to the writerfacilitator role, and the blending of traditional and digital methods in production of the novel.

Research into facilitating the making of Trevow has resulted in a model of participation and material for a toolkit to inform remediated practice. This is provided as an indicative outline, to be further developed and disseminated post-doctorate.