IT'S NO Chicago - but Blaenavon could take centre stage when it gets its own resident playwright this month.

Writer Louise Osborn was drafted in to encourage budding teenage writers.

Louise took on the role as part of an Arts Council-funded project. Based in Cardiff, Louise is an expert at tapping into teenage emotions - she is a script writer for the Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks.

She is looking forward to the challenge and says she will be running writing workshops.

She said: "I'll be setting them practical exercises using objects, and newspaper articles."

The teenagers will create characters and look at situations from their own lives from a different perspective.

Louise said: "There will be quite a lot of work on place and what it means, the origins of the landscape, its history, and what they consider to be the upside and the downside of their experiences of life in Blaenavon."

The teenagers will write a play themselves, with Louise's help. She said: "I'm there to provide structure, to guide and to offer suggestions. I'm working in a mentoring role.

"The idea is that a small team of young people who want to pursue their own writing will emerge."