ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how teaching, learning and scholarship on writing might benefit from a more synergistic engagement with the wider community and, given the changes in second-level education in Ireland, how the time is right for our writing centre to engage that community in our ongoing conversation on writing. The chapter will first give an account of our writing centre and the Irish context in which it operates, highlighting some of the changes that have influenced our practice or changed our direction. The chapter will also describe some regional writing centre (RWC, UL) initiatives that are designed to move our sphere of influence into the wider community. I focus particularly on our tenth anniversary symposium on writing and what I perceive to be the grossly under-emphasised, or shallowly considered, notion of context and how it is treated in current conversations on writing and the teaching of writing in Ireland. The incoherence between the expressed needs of the state for participation in a knowledge economy and the kinds of skills nurtured by the second-level education curriculum will also be reviewed, along with the changes being implemented in response. Finally, this chapter will consider how the regional writing centre might engage with second-level educators in an effort to develop and propagate a writing for life approach to writing development.
