We are delighted to announce The Spread the Word Life Writing Prize in association with Goldsmiths Writers’ Centre.

Competition Rules

Entries should be original works of life writing of no more than 5,000 words. The word count will be checked and entries longer than 5,000 words will be disqualified. There is no minimum word count.

For the purposes of the Prize, Life Writing is defined as non-fiction and should be based on a significant portion from the author’s own experience. Traditional biographies, where the piece is only about the experience of someone else, are excluded.

Writers only submit one entry each. Multiple entries by the same author will result in only the first entry being considered for the Prize and any additional entries disqualified. Writers who have previously won or been highly commended in the Life Writing Prize are excluded from entering; otherwise, previous entrants may submit.

Entries must be the original, previously unpublished work of the entrant. Graphic novel-style entries, where drawings or photographs accompany text, are welcome. Entries can be self-contained pieces of life writing, or the first 5,000 words of a longer piece of work.

The Life Writing Prize is open to writers aged over 18 and resident in the UK who are emerging writers, which means they have not previously published in print a full-length work. We define a full-length work as, for example, a complete work of fiction or non-fiction over 30,000 words.

Entries that are simultaneously submitted elsewhere are welcome – but please let us know as soon as possible if a piece is to be published elsewhere or has won another prize so we can disqualify it from the Life Writing Prize.

The winner will receive £1,500, publication on Spread the Word’s website, two years’ membership of the Royal Society of Literature, and a development meeting with an editor and an agent. Two highly commended entries will receive £500 and two mentoring sessions, a development meeting with an editor and an agent, and be published on the Spread the Word website.

Benefits
Putting effort into employee wellness can reduce absenteeism and encourage better teamwork in the workplace, as well as increased productivity. Once you’ve devised a program, continue to assess the outcomes and regularly survey your team to gather feedback.

Focus on general prevention
Consider offering flu vaccinations on site and look at offering employees incentives on health insurance. Some companies arrange for someone who specialises in health issues, such as a doctor, to visit the workplace and speak to employees.

Encourage a healthier diet
Most of us know that eating healthily can help prevent future diseases, but many are not aware that unhealthy eating is linked to a 66 percent increased risk of loss of productivity. It may be necessary to consciously develop a healthy food and drink workplace policy, including a healthy catering policy. A simple thing to do is substitute soda in any on-site vending machines with water or juice. Also investigate the nutritional value of food supplied for team meetings and work events. Consider putting a bowl of fruit out in the staff room and urge everyone to help themselves for free. You can encourage employees to bring in healthy lunches from home by making sure that there is a fridge in the break room.

Encourage more exercise
Encouraging employees to exercise needn’t be expensive as there are plenty of low-cost methods available. These might include: installing racks for bikes in your staff car park; encouraging employees to take part in fun runs and charity events; suggesting ‘walking meetings’ where people discuss business as they get fresh air and exercise; and putting in showers to assist those who ride or run to the workplace. Some companies negotiate group rates for their employees at a nearby gym.

Improve mental health
Recent reports have shown that ignoring mental health costs Australian companies at least $11 billion a year. We all have a responsibility to look out for one another. Some ways you can do this in the workplace include: running employee surveys to get valuable information on morale in the workplace; training managers on mental health strategies; offering rebates so employees are compensated for counselling if required; and refusing to accept any bullying and unprofessional behaviour in your workplace.

The health and well-being of customers and staff is our first priority, and we expect all staff to take every step possible to maintain food safety and work in a hygienic manner.

Hygiene
• Long hair must be tied back and no rings may be worn if touching food.
• The regulation chefs’ shirts and trousers are to be freshly laundered before starting a new shift, along with aprons if they are worn.
• Cross-contamination between raw and cooked food must be avoided. To this end, staff must use a clean board each time they cut different types of food.
• Staff should not touch money and then food without washing their hands in between.
• In the case of illness or a skin problem, the staff member should inform the manager. Cuts on hands and arms must be properly wrapped or bandaged.

Safety rules
• All injuries must be reported to management immediately.
• Safety guards must not be altered in any way, and staff must always wear protective clothing and gloves when working with sharp, hot, cold or corrosive items or materials.
• Loose clothing or jewellery must not be worn.
• Defective appliances must be turned off and not used – staff must not try to fix them themselves.
• Heavy boxes should be lifted carefully with bent knees and a straight back, holding the box close to the body.
• Work areas should be clean and free of hazards.
• Spills on the floor must be dealt with immediately.
• Flammable liquids must be stored away from flames.
• If storing containers of chemicals in the kitchen, they must have clear labels, so as to avoid any confusion about the contents.

Breaks
Staff have 20 minutes of paid break time per 3 hours of work, during which time they may not leave the premises. Every staff member who works a shift exceeding 5 hours is entitled to a 30-minute unpaid break and free meals. However, please be aware that the kitchen may not always be able to provide this service, especially in peak times. Beverages kept in the storeroom may not be consumed by staff, but filtered water is provided free of charge in the staff room.

In the 1970s, Clothkits revolutionised home sewing. Later, a woman from Sussex, England, revived the nostalgic brand and brought it up to date

A ‘I can’t remember many of the clothes I wore before I was six, but I have a vivid memory of a certain skirt whose patterns I can still trace in my mind. It was wraparound, with a belt that threaded through itself, decorated with cats in two shades of green. I wore it with a knitted red jersey my mum bought in a jumble sale, and brown sandals with flowers cut into the toes. It was 1979, and I was not yet five. I forgot about that skirt for a long time, but when a girlfriend mentioned the name Clothkits while we were chatting, it was as if a door suddenly opened on a moment in the past that resonated with vivid significance for me.’ The brand, founded in 1968, had by the late 1980s mostly vanished from people’s lives, but by a combination of determination and luck Kay Mawer brought it back.

B Clothkits was created by the designer Anne Kennedy, who came up with the ingenious idea of printing a pattern straight on to coloured fabric so that a paper pattern was not needed. It was accompanied by instructions that almost anyone could follow on how to cut the pieces out and sew them together. ‘I was rebelling against the formulaic lines of textile design at that time,’ Kennedy says. ‘My interest was in folk art and clothes that were simple to make as I had lots of unfinished sewing disasters in my cupboard.’ Clothkits has always embodied the spirit of the late 1960s and 1970s. Its initial design was a dress in a geometric stripe in orange, pink, turquoise and purple. It cost 25 shillings (£1.25), and after it was featured in the Observer newspaper, Kennedy received more than £2,000 worth of orders. She ran the company from Lewes in Sussex, where at its peak it employed more than 400 people, selling to 44 countries worldwide. Sew-your-own kits formed the core of the business, supplemented by knitwear. Kennedy’s children demonstrated the patterns by wearing them in photographs.

C Kennedy sold the company in the late 1980s. There had been a few administrative problems with postal strikes and a new computer system, which back then took up an entire room, ‘but the times were changing as well,’ she says. ‘More women were going out to work and sewing less for their children.’ She sold the company to one of her suppliers, who then sold it on to Freeman’s, which ran Clothkits alongside its own brand for a while, using Kennedy’s impressive database, but its ethos are big, corporate company did not sit well alongside the alternative and artistic of Clothkits. In 1991, Clothkits was made dormant, and there the story may have ended, were it not for Mawer’s fascination with discovering what happened Clothkits.

D Mawer’s mother bought her a sewing machine when she was ten and taught her basic pattern-cutting and garment construction, encouraging her to experiment with colour and design by trial and error. The first garment Mawer made was a pair of trousers, which she made by tracing around an existing pair of trousers. In her late twenties, she spent five years working on digital and sculptural installations. ‘It was an amazing, mind-expanding experience, but I knew it was unlikely I could make a living as a practising artist. I was definitely looking for a way that I could work in a creative industry with a commercial edge.’ The experience inspired Mawer to return to education, studying for a degree in fine art at the University of Chichester. Her passion for vintage fabric, which her mother had encouraged her to start collecting, led her back to Clothkits, and from there to a journey into the heart of Freeman’s. Negotiations with the company took 18 months, but in October 2007 Clothkits was hers.

E The ethos of Clothkits remains the same, and Mawer is proud that her fabric is printed either in London or the north of England, and that packaging is kept to an absolute minimum. ‘I wanted to feel that everyone involved in the brand, from design to production, was part of a process I could witness. I couldn’t see the point of manufacturing on the other side of the world, as that’s not what Clothkits has ever been about.’ The revival of Clothkits has also, of course, coincided with a growing sense of dissatisfaction at our disposable society, and the resulting resurgence of interest in skills such as sewing and knitting. ‘Making your own clothes gives you a greater appreciation of the craftsmanship in the construction of a garment,’ Mawer says. ‘When you know the process involved in making a skirt, you treasure it in a way you wouldn’t if you’d bought it from a mass- producing manufacturer.’