Ten things you can only do while volunteering with the Ministry of Stories

It’s Volunteers Week 2023 and we’re celebrating all the fun, creative, monstrous things you can try your hand at while volunteering with us. 

1. Travel through a secret door of a monster shop. Our writing centre is hidden behind the secret door in Hoxton Street Monster Supplies. You need to learn the secret knock – taught to all new volunteers at inauguration –  to gain access and enter a world full of imagination. 
2. Top up a BookBot. Once inside the writing centre you can meet the newest member of the team, BookBot. He’s eager to vend books to our young writers, but needs a helping hand to keep him topped up. Beep bop. 
3. Write a letter from a Yeti. If you’re looking to stretch your creative writing skills, join our Ghostwriting team and help keep hundreds of Monster Mail letters heading to the local Post Office each week. 
4. Cut out pictures of cabbages for a vegetable-based Harry Potter satire. Or pose for a live drawing of avocado on a skateboard or listen intently to the first draft of the plot of a brand new graphic novel featuring Bob Potato. 
5. Learn all the coolest new slang e.g. Bussin. Never fear being outdated again. Our young writers will keep you up to date with all the fresh slang and bussin new sayings.
6. Hear life changing speeches by young people in parliament. Join our fantastic schools projects such as Speak Up and see the passion and resolve young people have for current issues and the change they want to make in the world. 
7. Tin Fear. Join our Fearless Shopkeepers and spend the afternoon tinning fear and harvesting snot in between serving our local monster community (and occasionally the odd Human too).
8. Witness wild imaginations. Sit down at the table – or occasionally the floor or next to an invisible cat – and watch magic in action as our young writers spin new stories, fashion some poetry or bring a fresh new Zine to life. 
9. Find a catalyst for your own creativity. Nothing inspires creativity quite like an afternoon with 15 fearless imaginations. Bring back some unique perspectives and upside down thinking to kickstart some of your own work. 
10. Help build an escape room. Or declare independence, record an album, squeeze some poetry from ketchup and generally make a huge difference in the life of a young person who is discovering the power of their own creativity. 

Find out more about volunteering with us.