A Record Breaking Year in Schools

We’ve had our busiest year yet working with local schools to create a whole range of fantastic writing. 

• Our Fantastic Writing Facilitator Keith Jarrett led three rounds of our speech writing programme Speak Up with Bridge Academy Year 9 students. These young writers went on to deliver stirring speeches at Hackney Town Hall, Hoxton Hall and the Houses of Parliament.
• We worked with Hackney primary schools – De Beauvoir, London Fields, Queensbridge and Randal Cremer – on sketch comedy and poetry and published not one but two anthologies: This Book Will Blow Your Mind and Incidents Of Time Travel To Ancient Maya: A Journal By Rahmat Cluckoobox, both facilitated and edited by Writing Facilitator Justin Coe.
• Writing Facilitator Phoebe Wagner ran a Bridge Builders after-school club which saw Year 6 pupils from De Beauvoir, Queensbridge and Randal Cremer join creative forces with Year 7 students from Bridge Academy. They created zines and a group poem on the theme of transitioning from primary to secondary school.
• City Of London Academy Highbury Grove took part in a four-day sketch comedy intensive with Writing Facilitator Gem Ahmet. Chuckles abound as the group were joined by professional actors to workshop their sketches on the last day.
• Culloden Primary worked with our Writing Facilitator Bronia Evers on an after-school club inspired by the Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls books. Pupils chose a female role model to learn and write about, they then created puppets and filmed their stories.
• We held our first full week of one-off workshops since Covid, at Ministry of Stories HQ, with schools visiting to take part in Comic Books, Story Making, Gothic Fiction and Rebel Girls workshops. 
• We began a three year partnership with ten primary schools in Poplar, Tower Hamlets and worked on a different writing project with each school. The end results included a vibrant school newspaper, a rib-tickling Stone Age play, and a series of Masterchef style videos with young people performing their recipe poems. These were borne out of Writing Facilitator Laila Sumpton’s work with pupils at Marner Primary on a poetry project which celebrated individuality. 
• To mark the end of the first year working together, we threw a huge, imagination bursting celebration event! 

Congratulations to all the young writers who took part in our creative writing projects, we’re so inspired by your amazing imaginations! 

Find out more about our schools work and how to get involved on our schools page.