Projects and Residencies
We regularly develop projects in collaboration with schools, community groups and cultural organisations looking to engage their pupils or local children in wrap-around learning or unique creative experiences. Each project is determined by the ambitions of the partner organisation for their children and young people or a community event into which the creative writing will feature.
Be it coaching teachers in our methodology so they’re equipped to do ongoing extra curricular work with pupils, dressing a designated space for a magical residency that an entire primary school can experience or doing focussed work with a group of children with specific wellbeing needs, we will shape a project to tease out the creative strengths of each child. We work with professional writers and tap into creative networks to find illustrators, film makers, photographers and graphic novelists who coach groups in their specialisms, enabling them to author amazing work that they can be proud of. Sometimes our partners have the resources to commission us, sometimes there’s just a massive appetite to make a project happen and we can work together to secure the necessary funding.
Live and Breathe
Celebrating the launch of Brighton & Hove buses ‘Live & Breathe’ electric fleet, sixty of our After School Club members took trips around the city to find inspiration to write poems about their experiences, what they saw and what the concept of live and breathe meant to them.
BrightSTAR
BrightSTAR has become one of our signature projects where we take up residency in a local school and install an immersive, multi-sensory space lab that every child across all year groups can gain a unique creative experience. We see repeatedly how so many children who don’t normally engage with writing let their imaginations run riot and can’t put their pens down.
Digital programme
When the pandemic hit, we had to ensure the children at our After School Clubs could stay engaged but we also wanted to create resources that families could access across the region. We took our After School Clubs to online platforms, trained our volunteers in digital safeguarding and were able to keep groups connected, creatively inspired and active. We created a suite of digital resources including masterclasses produced by some of the UK’s best known and award winning writers and illustrators including Patrice Lawrence, Nick Sharratt and Joseph Coelho.
