On Saturday 28th September, we welcomed a new group of Young Writers to The Writers’ Block. Once everyone had settled in, we provided card and various pens to make and decorate name tags.
Having introduced ourselves, we could then split into pairs and find out about one another through asking questions about interests.
After this we moved into a written version of Consequences. This is usually a drawing game, but each person had to write a line and then we read the story at the end.
Incredibly, there were elements that carried through even though nobody knew what anybody else had written…and a few laughs in between.
A discussion about the relationship between art and storytelling followed, referring to Where the Wild Things Are and other picture books that we read as children.
‘Some of the first stories we encounter are picture books.’
Then we offered another set of prompts with a little more structure, courtesy of Paint Chip Poetry. This creative exercise relies on the names given to individual shades of paint and an additional prompt or theme for the piece of writing.
We then distributed postcards to begin the main writing element of the workshop with one simple question. You have a picture in front of you – what is the story?
Using the postcards as prompts provided our first insight into the participants’ individual writing styles and interests, as some kept it light whilst others explored darker themes.
To close, we asked the participants what they might want to explore in future workshops. Combining these requests with information gained from earlier exercises, we have a strong sense of what the young people want to explore and the journey that this year’s workshops will take us on.
We look forward to witnessing the creation of so much new work.
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