Amongst The Dark Angels are renowned copywriters, global brand ambassadors, marketing freelancers, authors and poets. From time to time, groups of Dark Angels team up on a project to fulfil a creative brief to help showcase what we believe in.

One such project, From Home to Home recently won a Design and Art Direction Award for Writing for Design.

Writing for Design Award – From Home to Home

From Home to Home was a collaborative poem and an unusual approach to using the space on hoardings around a building site. Could these temporary panels say more than the conventional property-development sales speak of “creative lifestyle environments”? Designer Mike Abrahams from Solidspace thought so and invited Dark Angels writers to say something more interesting about a new residential property in London.

The twelve writers wrote one line at a time, and then handed on the challenge of the next line to the next writer in a literary relay. The parameters were use no more than 34 characters per line, base each line on the theme of ‘home’ and start the next line with the last word of the preceding line.

Over the course of a year, as the building took shape in the space behind, the twelve monthly lines were displayed to intrigue and entertain passers-by. From Home to Home was the work of twelve writers who took part in the Dark Angels Masterclass at Merton College, Oxford, in April 2013.

FROM HOME TO HOME
by Darks Angels Collective

Home opens up your own vision of possible
John Simmons

Possible dances new beginnings with joy
Faye Sharpe

Joy in your heart tread lightly with love
Neil Baker

Love and soft arms that hold us each night
Sarah Farley

Night rooms of sorrows and ardour speak
Richard Pelletier

Speak dream bright windows to your world
Charlotte Halliday

World made divine by the promises we keep
Tim Rich

Keep dreams alive and nightmares at bay
Jan Dekker

Bay of belonging a shared harbour our own
Sue Evans

Own part of my restless heart sweet place
John Dodds

Place me in the bosom of this loving house
Jamie Jauncey

House me in the heartbeat at heart of home
Stuart Delves

About Dark Angels

Dark Angels is a programme of residential writing courses tutored by John Simmons, Stuart Delves and Jamie Jauncey at different locations throughout the UK and Europe. Started in 2004, at Totleigh Barton in Devon, these highly successful courses look at how to use words more engagingly and imaginatively within the business environment.

In recent years a number of creative collaborations have developed with the participants in the courses – first an exhibition Other Worlds at Oxford’s Story Museum and recently a collective novel Keeping Mum, written by fifteen writers and published by Unbound. From Home to Home is the latest Dark Angels collaboration, with a limited edition book planned in addition to the poem appearing on building site hoardings in monthly instalments.

About Abrahams Design and Solidspace

Mike Abrahams, designer, curator and entrepreneur, is brand communications director for Solidspace. Believing shared risk/shared reward is the future business model for designers and other creative practitioners, he is a shareholder and board director of Solidspace.

Noble Ox and Dark Angels

Find out more about Charlotte’s other adventures with the Dark Angels in the Noble Oxtale archive with The Angels’ Share and Whose Voice is it anyway?