Explore History, Culture & Writing

Once upon a time there was a City Lit workshop all about writing fairytales. The quest: to inspire writers to pen stories of love, fear, forests, revenge, dragons, witches, kings, queens, frogs and magic.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

A crash course in essay writing – beginnings, middles and ends. Suitable for students on A level and access courses or undergraduates.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

Develop your critical understanding of cinema through a range of concepts and critical approaches in film studies, including narrative, genre, spectatorship, authorship and directors, popular cinema, art cinema, national cinema and early film, along with technological developments including the transition to sound, while we view and discuss a range of key films from cinema's history as examples.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

Would you like to write a picture book text for young children? This course is designed for children's writers and for illustrators wishing to write their own stories; a starter course to develop both your ideas and your technique.

This workshop, designed for authors who have finished their manuscript, offers practical advice on finding and approaching a literary agent.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

This short, fun workshop is the perfect starting point for students who are writing for the first time or new to the poetry path. Join us for thought-provoking writing exercises and poetry theory for beginners.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

This inspiring workshop encourages students to explore a range of techniques and approaches for writing about your own life.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

This advanced level film studies course will introduce you to a range of theoretical approaches to the study of film. It will consider some of the earliest attempts to think about film, studies that borrowed methodologies from other disciplines. As early as 1915, for example, writers were applying psychology to film analysis, exploring the emotional responses of audiences to this still new medium. Early theorists argued for film as a distinct art form, and we will examine a number of their key texts. In the 1960s, film studies began to develop as a specific subject of study in universities in the US and the UK, once again deploying perspectives from other subject areas. We will examine a number of these theories and consider their continued importance for the analysis and understanding of film today.