Impact
Working closely with children over sustained periods of time, we see the transformation that our workshop leaders and volunteer story mentors can achieve in nurturing literacy and writing skills. There’s no measure for a moving, funny, beautifully illustrated piece of work, but it’s important we get the children and young people we work with to reflect on their progress as it helps them to consider their journey and see themselves as young writers.
In 2023 we worked with business consultancy Always Possible to develop our Theory of Change and from that we created a whole new evaluation framework. The children and young people we work with all complete self evaluation forms twice a year, we also gather feedback from parents/carers, volunteer mentors and workshop leaders and a range of other stakeholders to consistently check we are doing the best we can.
I think the fact that the students each finished the project with a poem they had created themselves, that was uniquely theirs and that they were proud of was phenomenal! The experience broke down preconceptions they had about writing and poetry and made it more accessible to them. They were all excited and proud to read their poetry, which is thanks to yourself for presenting the project with a certain importance and gravitas. You set the ground rules straight away and also calmly insisted that everyone contributed and that there were no 'opt outs.' I think this balance was important for the success of the workshop and without it, we may not have got such honest and personal poetry from them.
Lauren Howfield, English teacher and High Prior Attainment Co-ordinator at Brighton Aldridge Community Academy reflecting on Through the Tunnels of Moulsecoomb project