Exeter Word Hoard Launch

Exeter Word Hoard Launch 1am 1.1.26 

On 1^st January 2026 a new place-making research project is launched, this time in Exeter. The project is called, Exeter Word Hoard. We plan to continue using the method of Dialogue Journaling (*please see references below) to uncover specific places documented in the personal papers available in Exeter University Library’s Special Collections, through work with the Torquay and RAMM museums and through citizen-science. The ongoing work is communicated using dialogue journaling via this established magazine blog, Travel Writers Online (ISSN 2753-7803). We have a WhatsApp Community group; this is a citizen science method that was pioneered for a place-writing research project in the port of Ouistreham in France; this is fully documented in the Routledge book by Chowdhury, Mansfield, & Potočnik Topler, 2026 (full reference below). 

WELL Templates

You can find the templates for the WELL documents online here on the public web-page for the project, Exeter Word Hoard. The public can also join the WhatsApp Community group from the project's web page and request access to the dialogue library for their own writing and dialogue with other writers, please click on logo below:

 

Making Places from Literary Writing

Place-making writing uses a mixture of meta-fiction and narrative non-fiction. You can see this developing in the UNESCO-commissioned residency story created for Millbay in Plymouth UK; the methods and methodology for this approach for writers-in-residence are fully documented in Chicot-Feindouno, Mansfield, & Stothard, 2026 (full reference below). Other place-making writers that have been successful using this approach are W G Sebald, with his travel writing on East Anglia, and Patrick Modiano with his memorial writing of Paris and travel destinations including Annecy and Nice. The model for meta-fiction and a methodology that explores Bakhtin’s novelistic discourse is the work of André Gide, particularly Les Paludes, and Les Faux-Monnayeurs (The Counterfeiters).

 

The processual approach gives value to and draws attention to its sources and the writers that underpin the research. This innovative method of public journaling through an array of social media channels ensures a public engagement throughout the work. This challenges traditional storytelling by being open to dialogue and citizen science. The writing approach connects new audiences with historical documents by portraying the archive as a hoard or trove of secret narratives that have relevance for readers today. Further, the new narrative it creates allows readers to see the places in the city with an enriched view.  

Where do you start when writing about place?

In my preparatory field visits to Exeter, I have discovered the area just inside the city wall where the Romano-British families maintained their villas even after the withdrawal of the legionary forces from 380 CE onwards. Indeed, the Celtic Britons remained in Exeter right through Roman occupation and only finally moved on during the early 930s CE under the rule of Æthelstan. These speakers of Common Brittonic, also known as the British language, had formed a Romano-British culture with the elite Roman families. Cultural and linguistic mergers inform the history of Exeter. This will be explored in the research project in Exeter, UNESCO City of Literature in Devon.”

Exeter, Devon became a UNESCO City of Literature in 2019, the Word Hoard project will create new stories for our City of Literature tenth anniversary in 2029. The 10^th anniversary celebration metal is tin – very appropriate for Dartmoor, Devon and Exeter.

 

 

References (Click book covers to read more) 

Chicot-Feindouno, C., Mansfield, C. & Stothard, M., (2026). ‘Chapter 10. Dialogue Journaling in Travel Writing Projects.’ In Samia Ounoughi and Tim Hannigan (eds.). Writing on the Move: Form, Practice and (Im)Mobility in Nineteenth to Twenty-First-Century Travel Writing.  New York, Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 185-209.

Chowdhury, D., Mansfield, C. & Potočnik Topler, J. (Eds.) (2026). Sustainable Narratives and Technologies in Tourism. Abingdon: Routledge. DOI: 10.4324/9781003747185.

Mansfield, C., & Potočnik Topler, J. (2023). Travel Writing for Tourism and City Branding Urban Place Writing Methodologies. Abingdon: Routledge. DOI:10.4324/9781003178781.

 

Mansfield, C. (2022). A Processual Approach to Creative Non-Fiction, Writing in Education, 88, pp. 25-27. ISSN 1361-8539

 

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