We’re getting to the year-end now. November sees the end of The Superhero Project, which I put together for Ealing Social Services. It was  a four-month series of arts activity. On average Ealing brought six young people to each writer’s workshop. Two of those six won national writing competitions above thousands of entries. They won the Foyle’s Young Writers Award and the Wicked Writers award judged by Michael Morpurgo.  The latter featured in a national newspaper after receiving his from The Duchess of York..

I have taught a couple of Arvon courses this year. It’s a pleasure to spend seven days in a house in the hills with twenty creative students and a co tutor.  Throughout the year I’ve been writing an adaptation of Benjamin Zephaniah’s Refugee Boy for West Yorkshire Playhouse. I wrote a piece for Fuel Theatre Company. It’s called  Night Rain which you can hear as a Guardian Podcast.

In December my poem Let There be Peace is unveiled at University Place in Manchester University.   My play Something Dark recorded live for ABC in Adelaide is  to be broadcast throughout Australia  in 2012.  I received photographs of the etchings of my poem  for  The Olympic Site to go up in 2012.    In December I  filmed a series of pieces for Channel Four Television to be broadcast in 2012.  In December I took up residency in Margate to research a poem, which it is projected, is to be projected  in light on The Turner Contemporary  in 2012.

It’s my first full year as Dr Lemn Sissay and it’s my first full year as Associate Artist at Southbank Centre. Southbank centre is my home as a writer and artist. I write this blog because without family as a point of internal or external reference (in the past or present) it is difficult to anchor memory.   I believe  it’s near impossible  without the  skeleton of family to build a body of memory. This is not to say family is either good or bad.