Cosmopolis: The international gathering of storymakers
Think Something Different is an innovative new initiative from the University of East Anglia that will support the development a new generation of artists, critics and scholars and in so doing, help to sustain the culture of the Arts and Humanities in this country and abroad.
Conceived as an inventive response to the changing landscape of Higher Education, Think Something Different will create a fund for international graduate scholarships to be accompanied by a mentorship scheme for the most talented international graduates to attend the University of East Anglia where they will be guided by some of the most distinguished figures in the Arts and Humanities.
The stories of the world are numberless. They inhabit the world in many different forms: as thoughts left unsaid and unwritten, in a conversation between friends, as the unfolding story of a lyric poem or song, in novels, films, and plays, in those movements of thought and imagination that inspire works of art and inform scientific discoveries.
Every new movement in human thought and culture will also be the telling of a story. It is a profoundly human method for creating new senses of the world. Different kinds of knowledge can be carried through the medium of stories. They help us establish new orientations in a rapidly changing world.
One university in the UK, the University of East Anglia, has become a place where the stories of the world are welcomed and invented. It is home to a celebrated Creative Writing MA that has produced generations of prize winning novelists and short story writers. Each year writers from all over the world gather at the University to read from their work, to debate, to teach or to study. It makes an important contribution to the creation of new world republic of letters.
To celebrate and explore the potential of the universal human practice of making stories, the University of East Anglia is planning a major international event that will bring together creators whose stories have become important to audiences and readerships around the world. Some of these creators will be novelists and poets, others filmmakers, visual artists and musicians. Its purpose will be to celebrate and reflect upon this basic human art as it has arisen in different cultures and different media.
Cosmopolis will be held in Norwich, a city with one of the richest traditions of making and telling stories in the UK. Norwich was the first UK City of Refuge and it is now a city preparing a big to become the next UNESCO City of Literature on 5th June 2010.