Time to write is a necessity, not a nice-to-have

Writing of all kinds is an intrinsic and fundamental part of academic life, but prioritising the time to do it can be a real struggle. Our Time to Write (T2W) project started life in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, responding to requests from colleagues struggling to balance workloads and stay connected while we worked online, and then even more as we returned to campus. Since then, it has remained as popular and relevant as ever, and we have used UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) research culture enhancement funding to expand the programme with writing retreats and a community of practice for facilitators.

The project is rooted in collegiate, social approaches that support connection and community, providing opportunities for individuals to develop positive writing habits and explore different methods of protecting time. We began by running a series of “power hours” of writing for Academic Writing Month in November 2021, inspired by the work of Stephanie Zihm and Claire Reid-Mackie and building on the writing bubbles run by our team the previous year.

The power hour runs every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday and any members of staff with writing tasks to complete can attend for individual sessions or sign up for the whole meeting series. Each session starts with goal setting before we switch off our mics and cameras for an hour of concentrated writing time. The host then calls people back together to share progress with each other. This has become a valued space of friendly and non-judgemental connection, as we both celebrate and commiserate together. 

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Our approach is informal and running the sessions through a Microsoft Teams group enables people to engage flexibly over the year, around teaching or any other commitments, while retaining the power of an organised hour in their diaries. It is important to us that all colleagues who are engaged in academic writing within the university are invited and feel welcome, and participants include academics of all stripes, from PhD to professor, as well as technicians and professional colleagues. More than 240 colleagues have participated over the years and we have a core group of 20 to 30 regulars, many of whom help host sessions or have gone on to organise local power hours for colleagues or students in their departments.

It was in fact the community that inspired the first writing retreat, having been asking for one since the first power hour, and we have adapted Rowena Murray’s structured approach to retreats and social writing spaces to design an expanded version of the power hours. These retreats run over one or two days, with a mixture of on- and off-campus venues and focus on supporting healthy, positive writing habits as well as time to write.

The efficacy of writing retreats for leveraging positive personal outcomes is well established in the literature, with emphasis on supporting equity and inclusion to research, enhancing belonging and increasing well-being. Time to Write underlines all these benefits and provides further insights into the personal and cultural effects of supporting protected time for writing tasks. We are now undertaking evaluation activity to evidence the impacts of:

• Opening opportunities to all staff undertaking academic writing tasks
• Inclusive and accessible design, including providing time within the working day/week
• Providing consistent, long-term protected time to write
• Organising “university-approved” protected time
• Connecting colleagues and encouraging self-organisation.

Time to Write has enabled participants to build positive relationships with their writing. They are forming healthier, more sustainable writing habits that work for their personal circumstances. Individuals can plan their writing workloads, resulting in higher-quality (and often increased quantity) papers and research outputs, and the opportunity to take part in repeat sessions has resulted in people coming together to form writing communities. Retreats we run later in the year often start to feel like reunions! 

Beyond this, staff feel that the university has listened to their problems and offered a (partial) solution. Funded time to write, particularly on retreat, helps them feel seen and valued by the institution. 

Meanwhile, the university is also benefiting from Time to Write. Alongside increasing well-being and tackling loneliness, the project encourages participants to own culture change on a local level. We are seeing high engagement from female academics, many of them mid-career, while our open approach means we have created spaces that are welcoming to all staff, providing a space to connect across disciplines, job roles and levels of experience. The project is directly contributing to institutional obligations within the Researcher Development Concordat and other equality charters, as well as supporting that ever-present key performance indicator: more and better grants and papers. 

Time to write is a necessity, not just a nice-to-have, in creating an inclusive, equitable research environment. Our challenge now is embedding the T2W project into university business as usual. We are using theory of change and creative evaluation techniques alongside engagement data, surveys and focus groups to establish the benefit of regular, centrally supported protected time for both individuals and the institution.

Rosie Wadman is a senior teaching fellow and Jess Macpherson is a teaching fellow; both are academic developers in the Centre for Higher Education Practice at the University of Southampton.

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