The course was written, and the field developed, by a number of self-described Performance Writers and academics including John Hall, Ric Allsopp, Caroline Bergvall, Aaron Williamson, Brigid Mc Leer, Alaric Sumner, Redell Olsen, cris cheek, Peter Jaeger, Barbara Bridger, Melanie Thompson, Jerome Fletcher, and many others, and enriched by a program of visiting artists from around the world.
Performance Writing has been adopted and adapted by both independent and academic researchers, practitioners, pedagogs, and institutions in Oakland, California[5][failed verification] and The Banff Centre in Canada.
[6] In the UK, Performance Writing methodologies and sensibilities have spread – primarily through graduates of the program at Dartington – into a rich diversity of artistic forms and institutional formulations.
[2] At the symposium launching the field, Performance Writing was described by Caroline Bergvall as exploring "relationships between textual and text-based work when developed in conjunction with other media and discourses," and opening "the investigation of formal and ideological strategies which writers and artists develop textually in response or in reaction to their own time and their own fields"[8] She also understood it as "not primarily [a] unified academic discipline [or] one delineated, hybridic artform", but rather as an "area of joint practical and critical investigation of the many uses writing and language are being put to and push themselves into.
In May 2010 Bristol's Arnolfini, in collaboration with University College Falmouth, held PW10: a weekend of Performance Writing themed talks, readings, and artistic works exploring interdisciplinary approaches to language and textuality.