Apples and Snakes

Apples and Snakes are England’s leading poetry organisation and helps to develop the poetry writers of the future through a dedicated programme of training and live events. Running since 1984 they work from an office in The Albany, London.

My time with Apples and Snakes has seen me working on a number of projects over a 3 year period. Initially I was brought in to assist on their 40th anniversary show at the Roundhouse in London. Following the successful delivery of this project the freelance position developed into a wider role with organisation, which included marketing their Words a Stage talent development programme, Jawdance , their monthly poetry night in central London, Spine, their poetry festival for Children and Families and On:Line, a digital series of workshops open to writers of any ability.

During my time here I also helped to build an Artist Management Database using Airtable and it was my responsibility to manage the process of contacting and updating the details for their extensive list of poets and workshop facilitators. This has allowed the company to keep accurate records and up to date headshots and bios for many artists who they engage with, allowing for a much smoother process for web and socials media updates during creative projects.

As an NPO organisation they also had reporting duties to Arts Council England and at the end of each quarter I assisted the company by inputting event and project data into ACE Illuminate, meaning Apples and Snakes were able to hit their reporting deadlines.

Key Takeaways for Apples and Snakes

• A wide ranging freelance role working regularly across several projects over a period of 3 years

• Helping to make better use of database systems to ensure a smoother process of contact management

• Learning new systems such as Illuminate to help the company hit important reporting deadlines.

Find out more about Apples’ and Snake’s work here: https://applesandsnakes.org