In-person workshops at Amsterdam’s Ventilator Academy

In-person workshops at Amsterdam’s Ventilator Academy

Below you’ll find a selection of workshops we’re staging in collaboration with the Ventilator Academy, at OT301 on the Overtoom. Whether you want to try your hand at screenwriting, or want to improve your storytelling skills, we’ll provide you with a workshop experience that will help you take your creativity to new levels.

Basics of Screenwriting

8 Weeks x 2.5 hours

OT301 Cinema + Café space

Wednesdays: OCTOBER 4 – NOVEMBER 22
09:30 – 12:00
Price: €370 (incl. 21% vat)

8 Weeks x 2.5 hours

OT301 Cinema + Café space

Wednesdays: OCTOBER 4 – NOVEMBER 22
09:30 – 12:00
Price: €370 (incl. 21% vat)

Explore the building blocks of writing for the screen

Whether creating stories for film, TV or digital devices, you’ll always be mixing and matching three different elements: sounds, words and visuals. Through a combination of close readings of screenplay scenes, watching excerpts of screen stories, and writing scenes during the sessions (and sometimes as homework), this workshop will give you a thorough introduction to screenwriting.

In the course of eight weeks, you will learn how to combine dialogues and dramatic actions together, in order to write some screen scenes. And depending on your energy and intention, you might even write a short film script. Stop endlessly ‘thinking about’ writing a screenplay. Sign up for this workshop, and actually write one!

Matthew’s wonderful and unique exercises have given me a tool kit of questions and stimuli that I have taken away and can use at any time when writers block comes to visit. Thank you Matthew for this gift, and for creating such a fabulous environment and posse of inspiring artists.

Kim Farrant – Director of Strangerland with Nicole Kidman and Angel of Mine with Noomi Rapace

Matthew’s wonderful and unique exercises have given me a tool kit of questions and stimuli that I have taken away and can use at any time when writers block comes to visit. Thank you Matthew for this gift, and for creating such a fabulous environment and posse of inspiring artists.

Kim Farrant – Director of Strangerland with Nicole Kidman and Angel of Mine with Noomi Rapace

Write to Reconnect

Writing requires us to connect ideas and thoughts to words and sentences. We need to connect our hands and senses to paper, pens, and computers. And of course as writers we want our written words to connect with readers. For many people however, the pandemic was a time of profound disconnection, and while Zoom and Teams brought us new, alternative ways of connecting, where, actually have they brought us?

In this workshop we’ll explore not only how writing can help us reconnect with ourselves and with others, but also how this process of reconnection can improve our writing. In particular, we’ll look to the natural world for inspiration – to its profound levels of complexity and interconnection, and how ‘connecting different dots’ can lead us to (pleasantly!) surprising results.

In a supportive, structured manner we’ll write together in response to writing suggestions designed to coax us out beyond our comfort zones, to where we’ll experiment with different forms and styles. And we’ll get used to sharing our work in ways that make us both better listeners and sharper writers. This workshop welcomes diversity in general, and in the specifics of copywriters to poets, and journalist to novelists, and newer writers simply finding their way. By reconnecting with ourselves, and with nature and each other, we’ll all explore new ways to reconnect with our writing.

Write to Reconnect

4 Weeks x 2.5 hours

OT301 Café space

Thursdays: OCTOBER 5 – 26
09:30 – 12:00
Price: €185 (incl. 21% vat)

Write to Reconnect

4 Weeks x 2.5 hours

OT301 Café space

Thursdays: OCTOBER 5 – 26
09:30 – 12:00
Price: €185 (incl. 21% vat)

In Matthew’s Writers’ Stretch & Tone workshop I made a major breakthrough in my writing project, and looked forward to that special evening of the week when I would meet with fellow writers, each of whom became a source of inspiration as we wrote, read, and listened to one another’s work. I initially approached the workshop with fear and trepidation, not being a writer of fiction. But from the first moment, Matthew created a warm and safe atmosphere (online, no less), and I put pen to paper to his ingenious prompts—never to look back.

Leyla Neyzi – Research Fellow/Leverhulme Visiting Professorship, University of Glasgow

In Matthew’s Writers’ Stretch & Tone workshop I made a major breakthrough in my writing project, and looked forward to that special evening of the week when I would meet with fellow writers, each of whom became a source of inspiration as we wrote, read, and listened to one another’s work. I initially approached the workshop with fear and trepidation, not being a writer of fiction. But from the first moment, Matthew created a warm and safe atmosphere (online, no less), and I put pen to paper to his ingenious prompts—never to look back.

Leyla Neyzi – Research Fellow/Leverhulme Visiting Professorship, University of Glasgow

Ventilator Academy =
OT301 Café Space + Cinema

Overtoom 301

1054 HW Amsterdam

Revision Supervision

4 Weeks x 2.5 hours

OT301 Café space

Thursdays: NOVEMBER 02 – 23
09:30 – 12:00
Price: €185 (incl. 21% vat)

This workshop is limited to eight participants.

Requirement: submission of a (maximum 10 pages) manuscript, by Oct. 23rd

4 Weeks x 2.5 hours

OT301 Café space

Thursdays: NOVEMBER 02 – 23
09:30 – 12:00
Price: €185 (incl. 21% vat)

This workshop is limited to eight participants.

Requirement: submission of a (maximum 10 pages) manuscript, by Oct. 23rd

Are you perhaps good at generating story ideas, but not so great at proceeding further? Are you unsure how to put the old adage: ‘Writing is rewriting’ into practice? Then don’t worry, you’re not alone. Within the safe, supportive atmosphere of this workshop, you’ll learn reading and rewriting techniques that will enable you to get to the heart of what matters in your story. In each session we’ll begin by writing and reading together, and then we’ll give feedback on two participant-manuscripts in two rounds. 1. What’s working? What’s strong in this writing? 2. Are there any confusions, or obstacles to understanding?

While a sculptor’s raw materials might be a block of stone and a chisel, a writer’s raw materials are words.

While a sculptor’s raw materials might be a block of stone and a chisel, a writer’s raw materials are words.

So before we can get busy with any chiseling, we have to actually write our block of stone into being – say hello to your first draft. Only once we’ve created this block of words, can we then begin chiseling away the words that are superfluous to the story we want to tell. Then we’ll be able to buff and polish until we can finally see it: our story. Want to reveal your gleaming story-statue, hidden in your rough-hewn block of words? Then sign up for this workshop.

Some of the writing craft elements we will consider include:

  • Form, voice and style

  • Point of view

  • Coherence & consistency – the setting or ‘world’ of a story

  • When to show and when to tell

  • Word choices and dialogue

  • Wants, needs and conflict

  • Dramatic action, transitions, plot and character arcs

  • Authenticity, originality and passion

  • Notions of audience

I was so inspired to write from the creative and stimulating prompts. I would have never thought to write on such topics, but then I found that I had so much inside to say that just needed a prompt to get it out. I also really got a lot out of the part of the session concentrated on my pre-circulated work. The feedback from the instructor and peers was very motivational and kept me wanting to keep dancing, i.e. writing! That individualized feedback was so helpful in guiding me to the next step with my manuscript.

Heidi Morrison – Associate Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse

I was so inspired to write from the creative and stimulating prompts. I would have never thought to write on such topics, but then I found that I had so much inside to say that just needed a prompt to get it out. I also really got a lot out of the part of the session concentrated on my pre-circulated work. The feedback from the instructor and peers was very motivational and kept me wanting to keep dancing, i.e. writing! That individualized feedback was so helpful in guiding me to the next step with my manuscript.

Heidi Morrison – Associate Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse

Bio

Since growing up in Australia, Matthew Curlewis has worked as a performer-designer-writer on four continents. As a trained workshop leader in the Amherst Writers & Artists methodology, he is the founder and director of Amsterdam Writers.

Since 2008, this workshop series has welcomed international writers into workshops like Storytelling for Academics and Writers’ Stretch & Tone. As a senior copywriter, Matthew has written international campaigns for the likes of Emirates, WWF, VW, Macy’s and Sony. His essays and short fiction can be found in publications including The Guardian, Blume Illustrated and Wordpeace, and his Dutch-British-Polish coproduction short film Brilliance can be viewed via the streaming platform Lesflicks. Matthew has worked as a script editor on various feature scripts, and as a coach at script labs in the Netherlands, Russia and Azerbaijan. A video of Matthew’s poem Alter the Frequency, recently published by Blue Pepper, can be viewed below.

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