An Interview With Literary Activist Steve Dearden

Literary activist Steve Dearden

For him, I believe, literature above all signifies empowerment, intellectually and existentially, and this is the key motivational force behind his work both as a writer and a literary activist.

By Citizen Correspondent Ambrose Musiyiwa

Date Posted: 01/21/07

Reader Rating:

Steve Dearden is a literature activist, consultant, and writer. He coordinates the Writing Squad, a program for writers between the ages of 16 and 20 in Yorkshire in the United Kingdom, and Light Transports, a project commissioning and publishing writers in journey-sized chunks for free distribution on the transport network. He also works with a range of literature and cultural clients on project, business, and organisational development. He has written for radio and for magazines in the United Kingdom and Australia. One of his short stories has been translated into Swedish. Steve Dearden spoke about the work he is doing.

A.M: You have been described as a "gamekeeper turned poacher." How and why is this so?

S.D: It's a shorthand other people use and I don't recognize. I worked for the Arts Council for nine years, but it was a different beast in Yorkshire at the time. We were part of the profession, we got in there, got our hands dirty, intervened, collaborated, did strategic work, supported exciting individuals with energy and commitment. Again pastoral work in some ways, producer work too, a blend of strategic and focused intervention.

There was the same old bureaucratic shit, but I always saw it as my job to protect my sector from that, not from good business practice, and good policy implementation - they often drove that in any case - but from the kind of policy that is driven by central government rather than artistic agendas.

I've no problems with the government agendas. It's just that they are imposed rather than interpreted by Arts Council officers who have a lot of experience of meetings, little of making art and relating to readers or audiences. I always saw my job as representing the arts to government; now it looks the other way round. Sometimes I think Arts Council Officers seem scared of artists. They certainly don't create many 'big tent' opportunities for us jointly to create and deliver a strategy for literature.

So if people insist on using the analogy I would say that I was never a gamekeeper, always a poacher. If I was being ridiculous I'd say that I was the game.

A.M: What unites all the projects you are involved in? What motivates you?

S.D: I can't express it better than my mate Ralf Andtbacka, who put it very well in his introduction to my contribution to the Interland project: "...