Working with pupils from Musbury Primary School is always fun, and this time around it turned out to be extra exciting! We were expecting our Bank Manager to come with us, but sadly they weren’t able to make it. The class were disappointed that they weren’t able to come and visit them, of course, but when they discovered that the Manager was stuck in a serious predicament, the children from Class 2 rose to the occasion and offered to help. Then we set about writing a clear set of instructions to free our Manager and get him out of a very sticky situation!

Award winning children’s author, Guy Bass, Zoomed into our session at Wadham School to lend his support to a group of aspiring young authors. Over the course of the session, as well as listening to the pupil’s ideas and keeping their enthusiasm up, Guy gave advice ranging from how to build tension and write for a younger readership, through to the joys of editing and why he thinks young readers still love darker stories.

We had a fantastic launch event at Beaminster Books, for our latest publication - “Undreamed Nightmares”. A collection of strange tales, fantastic fiction and barely remembered dreams, the anthology is the culmination of a fiction writing project we undertook with the Year 6 pupils from Beaminster St Marys Academy in Beaminster. There were author signings, readings, speeches and even cups of tea! The pupils deserve to be very proud of what they’ve written, these are great stories.

It looked, for a while, as though Mountjoy School were finally going to meet the Bank Manager… until they rang and informed us that they’d had a bit of an accident and that they were currently dangling 300ft above shark-infested waters. Not only were they not going to make it to the school, but in fact they needed our help to survive!

Gods, demi-gods, monsters, mortals, and thin skinned deities interfering in the affairs of humans. The themes and tropes of the classic greek tales were the starting point for our new story anthology project featuring a host of Year 6 writers from Radipole Primary School.

The students of Hazel Class at Mountjoy School took us on an incredible journey in their tale of alien abduction, walking fruit and pink milkshake! Taking a character the class had previously invented, they wanted to see what happened next to our bovine investigator. It was a huge amount of fun to follow this character and see where their story took them.

The Year 3s from Badger Class at Salway Ash Primary let their imaginations run riot this week as they wrote a brand new story featuring Junior, an eagle-winged onion in his battle against the Evil Pizza.

Would you believe it? Someone’s only gone and left all their stuff lying around the Bank! We were interrupted while working with a brilliant bunch of Year Threes at Radipole Primary School this week. The Bank Manager had found various items littering his office, chucked around the canteen and even strewn around the vaults themselves! Fortunately, we were able to brighten his mood by working with the classes 3B and 3H to discover just who this forgetful  character was.

Over the past six weeks, we’ve had a great time running a series of podcasting workshops with a brilliant group of Year 9 and 10 students from Thomas Hardye School in Dorchester. Their energy, thoughtfulness, and willingness to dive into new creative territory made the project something truly special.