The Summer
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Beaminster St Mary's

Intergenerational Penpals

Year 5 · 22 writers · 6 sessions · April–May

The term opened with letters. Real, pen-and-paper letters. Twenty-two Year 5 writers spent six weeks writing to residents of a local care home — swapping stories, questions, jokes and the occasional piece of life advice in both directions. Letter-writing sounds old-fashioned until you watch a nine-year-old race to open an envelope with their name on it. And then came the best bit: the writers and their penpals finally met in person, to chat face-to-face and eat cake, and what started as a writing exercise turned out to have quietly become a set of real friendships across seventy years of age difference.

We filmed the project from first letters to final meeting, and it's every bit as lovely as it sounds.

Radipole Primary School

Story-making day

Year 3 · one-day workshop · April

A one-day whirlwind of collective storytelling, in which an entire Year 3 class invented characters, argued lovingly over plot twists, and built a complete story together before home time. As ever, the Bank Manager phoned in with impossible demands, and as ever, the children rose to them.

Their feedback forms, out of five: 5.0 enjoyed the workshop  ·  5.0 want more workshops  ·  4.7 feel more confident writing  ·  4.0 enjoy writing. That last number is why we exist — the gap between “I don't really like writing” and “can we do this again?” is exactly where the Bank does its work.

Radipole Primary School

Comic Clubs

Year 5 · two classes · June

Then in June we came back for more — this time with pencils, panels and speech bubbles. Two Year 5 classes spent the month turning their stories into comics, learning that a well-placed KAPOW! is a legitimate piece of literature and that a story told in pictures still has to earn its ending. The concentration in those rooms was total.

Axe Valley Academy

Story Anthology 2026

Year 9 · 10 sessions · April–July

Our longest project of the term: ten weeks with Year 9, building a brand-new anthology of ‘braided’ tales — interweaving stories that pass characters and threads between writers. Week one is always the same: a room full of teenagers certain they have nothing to say. Week ten is always the same too: a stack of finished stories that prove them gloriously wrong. The workshops have just wrapped, the anthology is heading for print, and we'll bring you launch news next term.

Axminster Home Education Network

The Gazette

6 young journalists · 7 sessions · May–June

Our first project with the Axminster Home Education Network: six young journalists who wrote, edited, laid out and published their very own newspaper across seven sessions. They chased stories, conducted interviews and learned the ancient newsroom art of cutting a favourite sentence because it wouldn't fit. Hold the front page — they made a proper paper.

Mountjoy School

Story Anthology Chapbook

Celebration days · July

July has been celebration season at Mountjoy, with chapbook days marking a term of brilliant stories from some of the most imaginative writers we work with anywhere. Mountjoy sessions are among our favourites of the whole year — the ideas arrive sideways, at speed, and they are never boring.

Launch season

Three books, three stages, one very proud term

Bridport · Radipole · Crewkerne

It has been quite the season for official book launches, each with readings from the authors themselves. Colfox's Unexpected Tales was kindly hosted by The Bookshop in Bridport. Radipole Primary's Greek Myths was presented to the whole school at assembly. And Wadham's Scandals, Rumours, and Lies — the Year 9 fiction anthology written with us earlier this year — was celebrated at the library in Crewkerne, its authors reading their own words to a room that had come out just for them.

There is nothing quite like watching a young writer sign a copy of their own book. And the presses aren't stopping: Wadham's next anthology, The Writers' Game, is being proof-read as we speak.

Salway Ash Primary

Poetry, Travel Stories & a launch to remember

Year 6 · 5 sessions · June–July

Salway Ash had quite a term. The Year 6s spent five sessions writing poetry for a printed chapbook they'll carry with them to secondary school in September — proof, in their pockets, that they are writers. And this term we also celebrated the launch of Travel Stories, the gorgeous red-covered book written by Salway Ash students, with lively performances from the authors at Clocktower Records.

Salway Ash writers have been generous with their verdicts on our workshops this year:

Salway Ash Primary

Songbank

Words → songs → an actual record

And then there's Songbank: poems that became songs, songs that became a real CD — recorded at Echotown Studios, hand-drawn sleeve art and all, now sitting in the racks at Clocktower Records. Somewhere in West Dorset there's a primary schooler with a release to their name. The launch, shared with Travel Stories on the same lively afternoon, was one of those events that reminds everyone in the room why words matter.

After-school club

The Writers' Account

7 writers · 13 sessions · April–July

Thirteen weeks of writing, redrafting and rehearsing — and then the brave part. On the last night of April, our seven Writers' Account regulars did something most adults would flatly refuse to do: they took their own poems to a microphone in a café full of strangers, and read. There were printed programmes. There was proper applause. There may have been a proud tear or two at the back (ours).

After-school club

The Vault

11 journalists · 11 sessions · April–July

Our newsroom. Eleven young journalists spent the term pitching stories, hunting down facts and putting the newspaper together, week in, week out. Deadlines were (mostly) met, headlines were (extensively) argued over — and Issue 11 of What's Going On? is now hot off the press. Don't miss the Ask the Expert interview with an actual brain surgeon.

After-school club

The Podcasting Studio

5 podcasters · 11 sessions · April–July

Headphones on, faders up. Our five podcasters scripted, recorded and edited right through to late July — finding out along the way that the hardest part of making radio isn't the talking, it's the listening. New episodes are brewing; keep an ear out.