TrAce Online Writing Centre
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From 1995-2006 the trAce Online Writing Centre hosted a unique international community where, using the internet as both medium and raw material, trAce contributors generated an unequalled body of innovative creative work. This group of people supported and influenced the development of new media writing worldwide and promoted lively debate about the impact of the World Wide Web on the future of text and literature.
trAce was founded in 1995 by Sue Thomas at Nottingham Trent University. Simon Mills designed and built the first website, and remained principal designer until 2005. In 1997 trAce was awarded a £356,000 grant by the Arts Council of England to establish an online community for writers, and by 2000 it had become the leading international centre for writers working online. In 1998, in collaboration with Mark Amerika and Alt-X, it held the first trAce/Alt-X Hypertext Competition, which was jointly won by Australian new media artist Jenny Weight and a North American collaboration The Unknown. Scott Rettberg, a member of the Unknown, would go on to found the similar but US-focused Electronic Literature Organization in 2000. From 1999-2005 trAce also hosted Assemblage: The Women's New Media Gallery curated by Carolyn Guertin. From 2001-2005, the trAce Online Writing School provided 100% online courses in writing and new media, taught by an international group of tutors.
The trAce conferences were a notable feature of the community. The first trAce Conference on Writing and the Internet took place in Nottingham, England, in 1998, and was followed by three international Incubation conferences in 2000, 2002, and 2004.
Early in 2005, Sue Thomas and Simon Mills left to join the Faculty of Humanities at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK, where Thomas established the Online MA in Creative Writing and New Media and Mills now runs the PGDip in New Media Publishing. Helen Whitehead was Website Editor and also managed Kids on the Net, the 'junior section' of trAce, from 1998-2005, leaving in August 2005. Randy Adams was Associate Editor from 2002-2006, commissioning a wide-ranging series of articles and interviews about new media writing and writers. Gavin Stewart acted as trAce Project Manager until Summer 2006, managing the closure of the organisation and the sale of its brand to the University of Bedfordshire.
In 2006 the trAce Archive was launched to ensure continuing access to this extensive historical resource. The trAce website evolved its own distinctive artistic ecology and the resulting complex interlinkings permeate this archive of writing and making by numerous writers and artists. Like the original website itself, this archive is of interest to many different kinds of visitors, including practitioners, researchers, teachers and general audiences.
In the summer of 2006 all activity related to trAce ceased at Nottingham Trent University, with the exception of the archive, which NTU is contracted to maintain.
