Thank you Penguin Random House
We’re celebrating the end of three fantastic years of support from Penguin Random House.
We are celebrating the end of a three year partnership that brought the power of the publishing world to the young writers of Hoxton.
Over the last three years Penguin Random House employees have volunteered their time and expertise in support of our young writers, boosting their confidence and ambitions, helping them share their stories with the world.
This support has totaled an incredible£190,000 of funds raised and 1,197 hours of volunteering.
From adventures in food writing to recording audio stories, these funds and time have enabled us to do big things together:
Audio Stories
This month we launched our first set of audio stories, written and recorded by our young writers. Penguin Random House colleagues met young writers to talk about their jobs in audiobook production, some of the children then recorded their stories in the audio studio at Penguin Random House and collaborated with a designer to create a full-colour 16-page booklet for the CD.
Picturebooks
Working with teams of professional editors and illustrators our writing clubs wrote 17 picture books which were then published by Penguin Random House. These books are also stocked in local libraries, available for friends and families to check out.
Rebel Girls
In December 2017 we hosted a visit from Elena Favilli, co-author of Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls. Inspired by this visit, we’ve create a new one hour workshop to local schools across the Summer. There will also be a resource for schools, so they can deliver their own version of the workshop which will include video content from the authors and an activity book.
As we come to the end of the partnership, we’d like to say a big thank you to Penguin Random House.
Lucy Macnab, Ministry of Stories Director adds, ‘This was unlike any other corporate charity partnership. The strong sense of creative responsibility and the belief in the power of children’s words has seen over 2,000 children begin their journey as writers. From day one, Penguin Random House staff collaborated with children to help tell their stories in their own words, from picture books to podcasts, also collaborating on learning resources, so other children can author these kinds of stories in the future. We are incredibly grateful for all that this partnership has achieved for our young writers in helping them to unleash their imagination and realise their potential.’
As we start to plan more exciting projects around writing and animation, we’d love to here from other potential partners who’d be interested in a long term corporate partnership. Get in touch at donate@ministryofstories.org
