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The University of Southampton
EnglishPart of Humanities

Research project: Invisible Mentors

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An AHRC Leadership Fellow projec.

Working with Artful Scribe, a literature development agency, and the Winchester Poetry Festival, May will set up a new national mentoring scheme for young poets, co-author a report on mentoring and creative practice, and complete a monograph on history of mentoring in British poetry.

Mentoring has long been central to the creative industries: a 2012 Mentoring Action Plan from the Department for Innovation, Business and Skills looked to stimulate economic growth in SMEs across the country. However, the 2017 Bazelgete report on the creative industries noted the need to increase our understanding of how mentoring works beyond traditional office environments.

May's new project will explore how mentoring can adapt to online delivery, scale-up effectively to deliver national benefits, and help transform the lives not only of mentors and mentees, but the organisations that support them.

The new mentoring scheme, Poetry Ambassadors, was launched in November 2020.

Related research groups

Centre for Contemporary Writing
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