what we do!
We believe that the act of creative writing, indeed, creativity in general, is vitally important to a child’s growth. Exercising the imagination and creating stories in particular, helps a child to make sense of the world around them, helps them question the world around them and helps them to orientate themselves within the world around them. It improves life chances and career outcomes for every young person. Of course, not every young person who works with The Bank will become a Booker Prize winning author, but they will be more confident, more curious and more ambitious as a result. They’ll be a funkier lawyer, a more satisfied plumber. When a young person recognises that they have achieved something remarkable - like, say, writing a story good enough to be published, we know that it sets up a mindset of:
“If I can do that… what else can I do?”
why we do it
Evidence of need
According to the National Literacy Trust report 2018 Fewer children and young people said in 2017/2018 that they enjoy writing and that they write something in their free time on a daily basis. Children and young people also think less positively about writing than they used to. NLT’s 2018 wellbeing report found that children and young people who are the most engaged with literacy have better mental wellbeing than their peers who are the least engaged. Children who don’t enjoy writing are significantly more likely face barriers to writing than their peers who do enjoy writing, in particular, finding writing difficult.
The Institute of Education and University College London did a 3 year study into Ministry of Stories and in their conclusions it stated: This research evaluation showed overall that the work of the MoS is making an extremely important contribution to the creativity and writing of the YP it works with in London. In particular there was powerful evidence that for YP involved in the out-of- school clubs, and for many YP in the case study projects, their creativity expressed through writing was enhanced as a result of the philosophies and ways of working developed by the MoS. Our evaluation focused on several key areas which each revealed the detail that contributed to our overall conclusion about enhanced creativity and writing.
Our centre is based in the South West of England in Bridport, Dorset, and we will work with schools which have a high proportion of pupils who experience socio or economic disadvantage. The target audience for our creative writing programme is children who live or go to school in these wards, many of whom are failing to reach expected levels of literacy and are experiencing social exclusion because of their lack of reading and writing attainment. Now more than ever schools need all the help they can get to catch up after the COVID lockdowns, we will be providing and invaluable resource to support schools with specific workshops which fit into the school curriculum.