Another fantastic morning at The Woodroffe School, where we had our penultimate Podcasting session for this academic year. Year 7 students participated with terrific focus and creativity as we explored Identity and the many things that can include, and carried out short tasks to write their own personal essays. We then recorded these for a Podcast.

In the second in our series of Meteorology-themed poetry workshops, we spent the morning with Years 1 and 2 at Salway Ash CE Primary School and introduced them to the ancient Japanese poetry form of Haiku. The Western interpretation of the form is a three-line poem with a syllable count of 5-7-5.

Budmouth Academy asked us to put together a session for Year 11 students who are heading into their GCSEs this term. One of their English Language exams asks for a piece of creative writing, so we used picture inspiration to write flash fiction and talked about what they thought made a good piece of creative writing.

We were approached by Salway Ash CE Primary School for a special poetry project this summer term, focusing around their whole-school topic of Meteorology. We started things off with Robins Class, in which pupils did a fantastic session of collaborative List poetry, and individual ‘If I were...’ poems.

We spent a deliciously fictionally berry-filled morning with Year 3 at Salway Ash Primary School. Their story took surprising twists and turns with a sushi-loving peacock, a peanut, and a Queen. It ended with nothing short of a blueberry FRENZY.

The Beaminster Museum reopened for the 2022 season with an exhibition of Haiku by young writers from the Prout Bridge Project. The Haiku were written during a workshop with The Bank of Dreams & Nightmares late last year, with this launch event always in mind.

Year 4 class at Salway Ash came up with an ingenious tale of a bar of chocolate named Henry. Henry came up against Fishsticks the microwave, who definitely wanted to rule the (micro) waves with his menacing stance.

Our Symondsbury Storymaking workshops were alive with artistic creativity; the two artists for our Year 5/6 and Y3/4 sessions provided the most fantastic experience for the young writers.

Bertie the Butternut Squash was the main character in Willow class’ charming story about a vegetable who wished for arms and legs. Bertie was chosen from an array of fruit, vegetable, and furry characters in this special storymaking workshop.

Two very different - and equally inspired - storymaking workshops at Bridport Primary school saw Year 4 classes Eggardon A and Eggardon B collaboratively create their own fictional words. The drama studio was full of fun and creativity for these two sessions.

Our first dual-school storymaking workshop took place with pupils from Years 3-6 at Membury and Mrs Ethelston’s primary schools. The session took place at Membury’s beautiful Village Hall, with state-of-the-art projector equipment that included an enooooooooormous screen.

We continued our Podcasting project at the Woodroffe School with a day spent with Year 10. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine we took the opportunity to use the workshop to allow the 14/15 year-olds to express their feelings about the current war.

Mountjoy School’s Maple Class was on a mission to create high jinx in the jungle during their storymaking workshop.

A wonderful International Women’s Day spent with a mix of pupils from Woodroffe School, where we explored identity and what we care about to write personal essays for individual podcast recordings.

It was a World Book Day extravaganza at Thorncombe St Mary’s primary school, with some fabulous costumes including the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland (pictured here looking a bit topsy turvy).

Storymaking took on exciting levels of development and characterisation at Mountjoy school, where Ash class created Bench and the Spirits, a tale of two characters wanting the same thing, but for very different reasons.