Explore History, Culture & Writing

Develop your creative writing skills on this practical intermediate course. You'll explore the fundamentals of fiction-writing craft, such as character and structure, and unlock your imagination to produce compelling prose. Suitable for those with some creative writing experience.



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

Relatively new to writing poetry? This inspiring course offers an opportunity to experiment with language and a variety of poetic devices alongside fellow emerging poets. Discover the key elements of a poem in a friendly and interactive class.

Explore practical and imaginative approaches to creative non fiction, including travel writing, life writing and the essay. Analyse published work, produce your own pieces, and benefit from detailed feedback.

Want to have a go at creative writing in a supportive environment? Join one of these introductory courses. Guided exercises will give you the tools to explore language creatively and find your own writing voice.

Fit creative writing into your busy day: a relaxed, informal rolling programme for writers of all levels of experience who enjoy being thrown new ideas and experimenting with poetry and prose.



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

This short course explores the basic elements of writing autobiography drawing on memories, diaries, photos, dreams and fantasies with a focus on the forms of autobiography, memoir and the personal essay.

Curious about art history? Join us for this taster session where we explore different ways into visual art and its histories, from the ancient to the contemporary.



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

Come and join us at the Cultureplex Ciné-Club, where once a week, for 12 weeks (and throughout the rest of the academic year), we will watch and discuss film. Taking its cue from the famous Parisian ciné-club set up by the celebrated critic and writer, André Bazin, ‘the single thinker most responsible for bestowing on cinema the prestige both of an artform and of an object of knowledge’, and the man who foresaw the emergence of film studies as a legitimate discipline of academic study, our contemporary incarnation of the film club will offer a curated series of films for detailed study, discussion and debate. Each film will be introduced, placed in both its cinematic, cultural and historic context. In sharing our viewing in City Lit’s premier screening room, the Cultureplex, we will approximate the experience of watching film in the cinema, one that is intense and fully focussed in a way that other modes of viewing often are not. After the screening we will devote the rest of the class to a collective exploration of the film, led by the tutor, but involving everyone in a participatory discussion that will allow all to express their responses, their views, their thoughts on the film screened.

Explore the archaeology and history of London through its cultural monuments, topography and material remains to more fully appreciate the rich archaeological evidence of the capital.



Tutor: Jill Hummerstone. Tutor :Jill Hummerstone.

This course will develop your critical appreciation of the cinema by teaching you how to read and understand film texts. We will look at the elements that underpin film form – narrative, mise en scène, cinematography, editing and sound – alongside its historical development. We will consider film style by exploring classical, post-classical and art cinema and we will examine influential critical modes of analysis, such as genre, authorship and spectatorship.



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

This short introductory course explores the core elements of creative non-fiction across genres such as travel writing, the personal essay and life writing.



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

Discover some of London’s fascinating smaller art collections and hidden art treasures on this gallery-based course.