Between March and July 2004, trAce Digital Writer-in-Residence Tim Wright travelled around the UK presenting an introduction to new media writing. He worked with the people he met to piece together the mystery of what happened to Oldton, his childhood town.

Accompanying him most dates was a participant from TEXTLAB, the week-long residential workshop held in November 2003.

Below are details of the dates on the trAce Roadshow 2004.

12th May - Lincoln Book Festival
Tim Wright appeared on the fifth day of the very first Lincoln Book Festival.  This event was born from the successful Central series of a few years ago and an amalgamation of two very successful events held in the city last year - the Lincolnshire Echo Book Festival and the Words and Voices event organised by Lincoln City Council.

5th June- Hay Festival
Tim Wright appeared at the Hay Literature Festival on Saturday 5th June at 9.30am. He took part in a panel discussion, sponsored by the Orange Prize for Fiction, with Kate Mosse, the creator of Orange Labyrinth, the online writing community, and Emily Angle, editor of the BBC Get Writing website. They discussed online publication, interactivity and multi-media narrative. For anyone unable to make it to the event itself the option to listen via the Hay's new webcasting facility was made available: visit the Festival website and click on 'hay radio: listen live' for more information.

22nd June - MAC Birmingham
Poet Catherine Byron joined Tim at this event to present her experiments with audio and new media based on Chaucer. Catherine was a participant in trAce's week-long residential workshop, TEXTLAB, which was funded by the Writers for the Future project.

28-30th June - IDEASFACTORY SCOTLAND
Tim made two trips to Scotland, each consisting of three dates and taking place either side of the Incubation symposium appearance (see below).

On the first leg of this tour Tim travelled with Chris Joseph, a participant in TEXTLAB, trAce's week-long residential workshop funded by the Writers for the Future project. Chris demonstrated recent digital writing projects.

Mon 28th June at Paisley University, Glasgow 6pm - 8pm
Tues 29th June at Stills Gallery, Edinburgh 2 - 4pm
Wed 30th June at University of Abertay, Dundee 2pm - 4pm

10th July - Birkbeck College Faculty of Continuing Education
This event was offered as part of The Faculty of Education's Certificate in Creative Writing course.  Please see the full FCE Summer Programme for full details.

12th July - Incubation3 Symposium, Nottingham
Tim was scheduled to present on the first day of the third Incubation Symposium of Writing and the Internet held at The Nottingham Trent University, England. Incubation is the premier international event for writers working on the web providing ideas, information and debate for the new media writing community. There were opportunities to experience recent works and lively discussions about the ways new media texts are made, discussed, and reviewed. We also explored methods of teaching and digital archiving in a creative context.

26-28th July - IDEASFACTORY SCOTLAND
This was the second of two trips Tim made to Scotland. See also 28-30th June dates, above.

On the second leg of the tour Tim travelled with Gavin Stewart, another TEXTLAB participant. Gavin's project, GAS, is an ambitious attempt to create a "New Media Meditation on the Self", based in part on the ideas of the Russian philosopher Bakhtin, and divided into a series of short works and symbolic motifs or "elements". The metaphor of gas was used by Gavin both to describe his shifting sense of self and the borderless, unstable nature of networked computer-mediated texts. Gas also happens to be a convenient pun on Gavin’s own initials - Gavin Andrew Stewart.

Monday 26th July 6 - 8pm
Peacock Visual Arts
21 Castle Street, Aberdeen, AB11 5BQ
01224 639539
http://www.peacockvisualarts.co.uk/

Tuesday 27th July 2-4pm
PICT Innovation Ltd
Alness Point Business Park, Alness, IV17 0UP
http://www.pict.org.uk/

Wednesday 28th July 12-2pm
Dingwall Higher Theological College

6th October - Channel 4 Cinema, London
The official launch of In Search of Oldton took place on 6th October at the Channel 4 Cinema in London courtesy of IDEASFACTORY.