The Poetry Machine: Heart-fizzing poetry inventions made especially for you!  Poet, Beth Calverley, will be joining us at Quay Words with her word-whirring Poetry Machine. This is your chance to experience poetry, created in response to your thoughts, feelings, ideas, and discoveries.  Pop by the Custom House between 2 pm and 5 pm to co-create…

A conversation with Jane Pugh, writer and Phoebe Cummings, artist. Join us for a fascinating discussion between two creatives, writer Jane Pugh and ceramic artist Phoebe Cummings, who will delve into the significance of clay and its influences on their recent work. They will discuss their shared practice of making site-specific work that responds to…

The Poetry Machine: Heart-fizzing poetry inventions made especially for you!  Poet, Beth Calverley, will be joining us at Quay Words with her word-whirring Poetry Machine. This is your chance to experience poetry, created in response to your thoughts, feelings, ideas, and discoveries.  Pop by the Custom House between 11 am and 3 pm to co-create…

Exeter Custom House, with its setting on the quayside by the River Exe, overlooked by the wild landscape of Dartmoor, is the perfect place to discover real and imagined natural worlds. On this course spread over five weeks, you will embark on outer and inner journeys, finding fresh ways to write about the places and…

FREE 11 am – 4 pm. Drop in to the Exeter Custom House to be immersed in Ellen’s new piece, taking you on a journey down the river Exe, and investigating scientific themes around ecology, climate change and the potential impact of beavers. With sound and projections, you can experience this immersive literary soundwalk, lying…

Are you looking for new ways to engage young learners with creative writing and composition? Quay Words has teamed up with Cornwall-based The Writers’ Block to explore ways that Exeter Custom House can be a catalyst for young people and schools. In addition to our programme of schools visits, we are offering CPD training workshops…

Join us at Custom House for a lively conversation event between a team of three creative writers and a team of three scientists, all based in Devon, and all actively working to address the climate crisis in different ways through their work. Ellen Wiles, Quay Words’ Spring Writer in Residence, on a theme of ‘Science’,…

Writer-in-Residence and creative writing lecturer Ellen Wiles will lead you on a walk from Custom House along the River Exe, taking breaks for fun and varied creative writing exercises that engage with the experience of nature in this unique riverscape. Suitable for children aged 6+. No previous creative writing experience necessary! At booking, you will…

Louisa Adjoa Parker will be celebrating her Quay Words residencies by sharing her commissions with us. Louisa will read from her poem ‘Let the river sing’ and a brand now commission following her Autumn 2021 residency.  Louisa will be joined by some of the Quay Voices she worked with across her residency. All the work performed will…

With a top hat from a junk shop and mail-order wand, pioneering storyteller and writer Sally Pomme Clayton explores the secret world of the magician. In this intimate, enchanting performance, she mixes fact with fiction, fragments of myth with antique jokes; dazzling fairytales and snippets of culture and science, forgotten folklore to mysterious images on…