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Faber Academy has expanded its creative writing programme to offer a series of writing courses in partnership with online parent network Mumsnet.
Faber's creative writing arm will provide courses on the new Mumsnet Academy calendar, which will also feature classes in skills such as cookery, entrepreneurship, social media, gardening and philosophy.
Patrick Keogh, Mumsnet consultant, told The Bookseller it had chosen to partner with Faber because of its strong reputation in publishing. "Faber has a very high reputation for delivering good courses in this area, and I think working together can be more powerful than working in isolation," he said. "We wanted to team up with some high quality partners."
Faber enterprise development director Jason Cooper said the writing classes would be tailored to the needs of busy parents. "This is a significant strategic step, bringing the collective experience and expertise of a publishing house directly to Mumsnet's engaged membership," he said.
Cooper added: "We had been experimenting ourselves with doing courses in the day, wondering if there was a market—and we've always had this idea of attracting people who could come in the day, rather than in the evening, and perhaps it would be people with children. One of the challenges always is how you reach the market, advertise yourself and Mumsnet came along. The opportunity to reach that channel was a very interesting one."
Cooper said the Faber Academy could work with other companies in the future: "There could be other collaborations up ahead. There would always have to be this kind of channel attached, and there's a limit to the number of times you want to do this kind of thing. But we are always keen to work with anyone who has an idea or has a channel for our ideas."
The first Mumsnet tutoring on offer will be a two-day crash course with author Joanna Briscoe, entitled "Fiction for Beginners", taking place at Faber's offices on 16th-17th June, and costing £299. It will be followed by a five-day "Writing Your First Novel" course, costing £550, led by Louise Doughty.
Other organisations involved in Mumsnet Academy include School for Startups, The School of Life and Cookery School.
In March this year, Faber Academy created a new online creative writing course, Faber Academy Online, which hosts chatrooms, forums and video content from Faber editors. It also runs online versions of its face-to-face courses, such as it "Writing A Novel" course. In November 2011, the Academy expanded its remit by launching a three-day self-publishing course, entitled "Bring Your Book to Market", with it running for the first time in February this year.