2.Main Content
Talent
Skillset's Writers' Circle
Throughout 2006 we were delighted running the first Skillset's Writers' Circle - a groundbreaking programme designed to support and develop the screenwriting careers of eight writers who already had professional experience and success in a creative field other than screenwriting. After a massive search and over 500 applications, we selected nine, all of whom have considerable success writing poetry, novels, plays, or writing for TV, radio or comedy. They joined us once a month for the remainder of the year to learn screenwriting skills and be introduced to key members of the film industry - and we have great hopes for them becoming a major part of the future of UK film.
The Writers' Circle is:
Moira Buffini
Lana Citron
Helen Cross
Rob Gittins
Andrew Holmes
Alison Penton Harper
Meg Rosoff
Toby Young
You can download an Industry Guide with information about the Writers' Circle and their screenplay projects and ambitions by clicking here (this file requires Adobe Acrobat Reader).
In a unique line up of events during 2006, the Writers' Circle:
*Attended a series of hosted dinners – each with an eminent after-dinner speaker – where they met and shared ideas with some of the UK’s most highly regarded filmmakers, screenwriters and producers
* Acquired screenwriting and networking skills through a complementary programme of lectures, focussed on different aspects of filmmaking - from the adaptation process to the role of the producer
* Accessed a broad range of short courses, as required, from The Script Factory’s screenwriting and development programme
* Associated with a dynamic and influential network of fellow writers all at the beginning of their screenwriting careers
OUR PATRONS: THE WRITERS’ CIRCLE INNER CIRCLE
Supporting the project throughout the year was a group of esteemed creatives, all of whom have crossed between various artistic fields with considerable success. They are SIR RICHARD EYRE, whose theatre career has been crowned with multiple awards including three Olivier Awards for his recent Hedda Gabler, and whose film career has included writing and directing the BAFTA-nominated Iris and directing the feature adaptation of the novel Notes on a Scandal; DEBORAH MOGGAH, the acclaimed author whose novels from Tulip Fever to Close Relations have won her an international following but whose writing skills have easily transferred to television (Love in A Cold Climate) and on to her most recent smash as screenwriter for the BAFTA-nominated Pride & Prejudice; and RONAN BENNETT whose novels have found huge critical and commercial success from The Catastrophist (shortlisted for the 1998 Whitbread Novel Award), to the more recent Havoc, in its Third Year which won the 2005 Hughes and Hughes/ Sunday Independent Irish Novel of the Year Award, was longlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. More recently Ronan's career has switched between novels and film and television with screenplays for the feelgood Brit comedy Lucky Break and the controversial 9/11 drama Hamburg Cell.
Award-winning author Ronan Bennett 
Pride & Prejudice screenwriter and celebrated author Deborah Moggach
Award-winning theatre & film director, Sir Richard Eyre
Writers' Circle is one of a number of Script Factory projects supported by Skillset through the Film Skills Fund.
