Hazel Plowman, Head of Creative LearningFebruary 2019

Bath Festivals Creative Learning

Paper Nations 2016-2018

A report on our partnership

About Paper Nations

Paper Nations is a creative writing partnership initiative, championing approaches to the art of writing that are inclusive, playful and exploratory. Growing out of extensive research and consultation with practitioners, the programme as a whole aims to enhance existing creative writing provision in England in a sustainable way.

Paper Nations is led by Bath Spa University’s TRACE centre (The Research Centre for Transnational Creativity and Education) working in partnership with Bath Spa University’s Creative Writing Faculty and Institute for Education, Bath Festivals, the National Association of Writers in Education, StoryHive and a thriving community of local schools and arts organisations.

Paper Nations’ 2016-18 programme was supported by the Arts Council England Creative Writing in Schools fund.

About Bath Festivals

Bath Festivals is a charity that brings some of the finest international musicians, speakers and writers to entertain audiences, in the beautiful venues and spaces of our world heritage city. By creating innovative and diverse programmes, our festivals inspire and provide unique experiences for residents and visitors to Bath.

We are responsible for The Bath Festival in the summer and Bath Children’s Literature Festival in the autumn, which bring the city alive with a celebration of the arts. Our year-round creative learning programme of hands-on music and literature projects gives children and young people opportunities to gain real-world experience, building their inner confidence and improving communication skills through the arts.

About this report

This report documents the work Bath Festivals Creative Learning department undertook as a partner in Paper Nations 2016-18. It also draws out elements of best practice and reflections on the work we delivered over the 3 years.

During Paper Nations 2016-18 Bath Festivals Creative Learning was responsible for 3 strands of work:

1. Developing the Creative Writing Voice: a series of workshop programmes in Primary, Secondary, Special and alternative school contexts

2. Celebration events and engagement opportunities3. Research into the role of Creative Learning/Arts Organisations in the wider Creative Writing

Ecology

Case Studies/Longer evaluations from two of the Developing the Creative Writing Voice projects can be found in the Appendix.

An external evaluation of Paper Nations was conducted by LKMCo and is available on the Paper Nations website www.papernations.org

1. Developing the Creative Writing Voice

Introduction

This strand of Bath Festivals Paper Nations work was focused on delivering Best Practice projects, enabling schools to experience high quality creative writing interventions, and alongside this to draw out the essence of Best Practice in this context.

At the beginning of the 3 years, Developing the Creative Writing Voice was a focused around spoken word poetry as a gateway to a range of literary genres to support disadvantaged children and young people to find ways into literacy and allow them to discover their own creative voices.

The project built on the learning Bath Festivals had gained from The Write Team, a major creative writing project which utilised creative writing practice as a tool to engage ‘invisible’ pupils, and Home Grown an emotional literacy project we ran in collaboration with Mentoring Plus working with disengaged KS3 pupils. These projects demonstrated the impact of bringing writers into school to work with pupils and teachers for a number of weeks. Outcomes of these projects included increased engagement, confidence and attainment in literacy as well as across the curriculum.

Over the course of Paper Nations 2015-2018 the projects we delivered expanded from a focus on Spoken Word exploring other genres, but all underpinned by the idea of opening up ways into creative writing and empowering the young people to feel that: ‘I am a writer and my writing is valued’.

Across the projects we worked with artists we had established relationships with and used the expertise of our partners to work with new artists, as well as providing opportunities for early career artists to work alongside these more experienced artists.

Partnership and collaboration were also significant in the development and delivery of the projects, and they enabled us to maximise the impact of the work and find ways into new communities, expanding the reach of our work.

The projects were produced by Hazel Plowman, Head of Creative Learning at Bath Festivals.

PROJECTS DELIVERED IN NUMBERS

Hayesfield Girls School ParticipantsBath Community Academy Children & Young People 1066Mentoring Plus Teachers 126St Mark’s School Writers 16Word Up project Bristol Children’s Hospital Sessions 149Fosse Way SchoolWestfield Primary School Days employment for artists 75Poetry Slam

Hayesfield Girls School - Spring 2017

Pupils taking part: 8Pupils in receipt of Pupil Premium: 8 - 100%Number of SEND pupils: 2Lead Artist: Rebecca TantonySessions: 10Length of session: 60 minutes

Bath Festivals previous relationship with Hayesfield was mainly through outreach author visits during the Children’s Literature Festival. Although the school had been involved in The Write Team project 2008-2011, changes of personnel at the school and at Bath Festivals meant this relationship had been untended. Paper Nations gave us the opportunity to work alongside the Institute for Education at Bath Spa University and work in partnership with them on accessing schools. With Hayesfield we worked with Helena Thomas, PGCE Secondary English Tutor, who had an established relationship with Lizzie Twohigg, the Head of English. Helena spoke in person to Lizzie whilst she was at the school as part of her role and introduced the project and me to Lizzie, which led to a visit to meet Lizzie and the development of the project.

Because the school as a whole didn’t have a high enough Pupil Premium percentage, we decided to just work with Pupil Premium students. This meant Lizzie had to find a suitable time to do this. So instead of bringing them out of lessons/off timetable she decided to create a slot during the school’s enrichment time and targeted Year 7 & 8 pupils who she felt could benefit from the project. Lizzie was keen for these students to work with Spoken Word to give them space to find their own creative voices.

Rebecca Tantony led a series of 10 after school sessions, supported by Malaika Kegode. Rebecca had been a lead artist on our Home Grown & Building Bridges projects. We worked with Rebecca to initiate relationships with early career artists, which led to working with Malaika, a Bristol based poet who runs her own Poetry night, Milk Poetry at the Tobacco Factory.

The young people had the opportunity to explore Spoken Word poetry, focusing on exploring their own experiences and finding their voice. The young people were brimming with ideas and their creative confidence grew throughout the programme as they were supported to develop and craft their poetry by Rebecca and Malaika. They were invited to create a performance for The Bath Festival’s outdoor stages and created a group piece which wove together some of the pieces they had written during the project. This gave them the chance to edit their work for a purpose, to work on performance skills and to celebrate their achievements.

The young people’s work was also included in Words on the Street trail of Creative Writing at The Bath Festival 2018.

Cost of Project £2000, £1500 from Paper Nations budget, £500 from Hayesfield School.

Bath Community Academy – Spring 2017

Pupils taking part: 17Pupils in receipt of Pupil Premium: 4 - 24%Number of SEND pupils: 4Lead Artist: Rebecca TantonySessions: 10Length of session: 100 minutes (2 x 50 minute lesson)

Bath Festivals had worked with Bath Community Academy and teacher Clare Weatherall on a number of projects before Paper Nations, most notably the Home Grown spoken word project. Clare felt particularly inspired by this work and recognised the benefits for the young people she worked with.

We spent a considerable amount of time setting up the project as the school changed Headteachers and during the process it was announced that the school was facing closure. However, the interim Head, once in post, was keen to work with us and the project. Whilst the forthcoming closure provided challenges and meant that the relationship we had spent time building was likely to cease, we felt strongly that the young people still needed quality experiences, in fact probably more so in the light of the impact of their school community depleting around them.

In this project a class of Year 8 pupils took part in 10 sessions which took place during a double period of English each week. Again, Rebecca Tantony led the sessions supported by Malaika Kegode. Sessions explored different ways of gathering ideas to create poetry, crafting and editing and performance skills alongside games such as Rhyme Wars to build confidence and engage pupils in the process. All the young people involved were working below the expected levels of literacy and the project helped to reconnect them with the purpose and value of creative writing. At the end of the project all of the young people had created a series of their own poems which the school were putting together into an anthology. In the final survey, 63% were proud of the creative writing they produced during the project, and there had been an uplift of 30% of those who now enjoyed creative writing.

In addition to the sessions, the young people also had a visit from Spoken Word artist Caleb Femi, who performed to the whole year group as part of The Bath Festival 2017. The young people and staff in the audience found this performance inspiring and captivating and were keen to get involved in spoken word poetry as a result.

Cost of Project £2000, £1500 from Paper Nations budget, £500 from Bath Community Academy.

Mentoring Plus - May 2017

Young people taking part: 8Pupils in receipt of Pupil Premium: 1 (all 8 on free school meals)Number of SEND pupils: 1Lead Artist: Jon AitkenSessions: 3Length of session: 90 minutes

This project was initiated through Mentoring Plus as they had a magazine project they were working on and they wanted to find a writer to support the young people to create articles for the magazine. It made sense to bring the project under the Developing the Creative Writing Voice umbrella and support it through this budget.

The project entitled The Wisdom of Youth was designed by the young people as a way of sharing insights and experiences with other young people. Thinking about the best possible writers to support the young people to create their articles led to contacting Rife magazine, an online magazine for young people by young people, at that time edited by Nikesh Shukla. I got in touch with Nikesh and we explored possible writers for the project. Nikesh suggested Jon Aitken, one of the original young people who worked on Rife and who had since worked with other young people to help them create articles and vlogs.

Mentoring Plus were also keen that the sessions took place in an inspirational venue, so through the Paper Nations partnership we were able to book rooms at Bath Spa University’s Newton Park campus.

We worked with 2 groups of young people, one Primary group and one Secondary group, who each took part in 3 sessions working with Jon. The young people spent time exploring their own ideas and experiences and were supported by Jon and their mentors to create articles which bring these through in their own unique voices. The group also worked with an artist and a graphic designer to create the finished magazine. These articles were published in the magazine which was launched at Mentoring Plus’s yearly celebration event. There was good engagement from the young people and 5 out of 6 young people surveyed said they would do more creative writing as a result of taking part in the project. The young people really enjoyed being at Newton Park, one young person said they wanted to live there when they were older!

Cost of Project £300 from Paper Nations budget, travel for artist and design/printing costs covered by Mentoring

Plus.St Marks School, Bath – Autumn 2017 & Spring 2018

Pupils taking part: 81Pupils in receipt of Pupil Premium: 31Number of SEND pupils: 42Lead Artist: Jon AitkenSessions: Autumn - 10 weeks working with 1 Yr7 & 1 Yr8 class. Spring - 10 weeks working with 1 Yr7 & 1 Yr8 classLength of session: 60 minutes

St Marks School and English teacher Stella Pakeman have a long-term relationship with Bath Festivals, established during the Home Grown project. There was a long, slow lead in, as is sometimes the case with projects in schools, but this did mean we had time to think and clarify our ideas. Stella was clear that she wanted to move away from Spoken Word but still wanted to empower the young people to write about what interested them. I suggested that we worked with Jon Aitken, as the project with Mentoring Plus had worked so well and Stella ideas seemed aligned. Lucy Sweetman, Senior Lecturer at Bath Spa University and part of the Paper Nations team also researched the impact of the project on disadvantaged pupils as part of a wider piece of research she was undertaking for Paper Nations.

Jon delivered 2 x 10 week projects covering the whole of Year 7 and Year 8 at St Marks School. The project was focused on the young people creating articles, poems and vlogs about self-chosen topics. During the 10 sessions, Jon supported the young people to script and film their vlogs and brought in guest writers in to help them experiment with other forms of writing.

Lucy’s involvement in the project enabled us to offer the young people the opportunity to visit Bath Spa University publishing lab to create their own magazine page and take part in a nature writing workshop in the grounds. This was an excellent experience for the young people, who commented that they learnt what a university was like and enjoyed the welcoming atmosphere. Over the course of the 10 weeks the young people had the opportunity to go through the process of inception to publication which was a valuable experience. The range of activities also meant that pupils with different abilities and learning styles all had chances to shine and began to feel empowered as writers. 2 of the pupils’ pieces of writing were displayed as part of the Words on the Street creative writing trail as part of The Bath Festival 2018.

Stella also started a Creative Writing Club during the course of the project and a regular group of young people attended as well as some teachers!

We will continue our relationship with the school and have arranged for every pupil in the school to receive a notebook which will be launched with a special assembly. The pupils will have time to write in a regular tutor time slot each week, and Stella will be sharing ideas and resources with the other teachers for these sessions, but fundamentally they are trying to establish writing habits where young people have the freedom to be creative.

We have written a case study on the project focusing on the collaboration and relationships between teacher, artist, arts organisation and university and how this enabled the project to succeed.

Cost of project £4000 - £3,000 Paper Nations budget, £500 St Marks & £500 Bath & Wells MAT

Word Up project Frome – Academic Year 2017-18

Pupils taking part in workshops: 213Pupils attending events: 601Teachers taking part: 86Lead Artists: Alice Maddicott, Liv Torc, Chris Redmond, Angie Belcher, Andy HawkinsSessions: 5 in each schoolLength of session: half day

Word UP was a community project based in Frome. The project began with a conversation with Lisa Millard, editor of Little Things Magazine and ex-assistant Head of Frome College. She had been working with Frome Town Council on literacy and had been invited to apply for a grant to deliver a project to address literacy gaps in Frome. This led to us agreeing that if she was successful with the grant, Bath Festivals could match this with money from Paper Nations. Lisa was awarded the grant, and we were able to develop a year’s worth activity working with all the schools in Frome.

Our aim was to cultivate a love of words through engaging writers, poets, storytellers and wordsmiths to inspire future generations in schools, community events and workshops. Over the academic year we delivered 5-week creative writing projects in each of the 12 First schools in the Frome area. 9 Frome schools attended the Bath Children’s Literature Festival in October 2017 and we also worked with Chicken House publishers on 2 author events in February, 580 pupils attended the February events. We ran a termly ‘Teachers as Writers’ group delivered by Steve Voake for teachers to have a chance to explore their own creativity. The year of activity culminated in a Festival of Words on 23rd June, a town wide community event celebrating words and writing.

We shared expertise in writers, engaging local writers we had both worked with or who came recommended from our local contacts. The writers focused on different genres, be that poetry, prose, song writing, comedy or performance.

Lisa’s established relationship within the Frome school sector and her place within the local community enabled the project to have the wide reach we intended and helped us celebrate achievements through her magazine. Her understanding of how best to communicate with the teachers supported their involvement and made things easy for them.

The project has seen increased engagement with reading and writing activity and responses from the schools have been incredibly positive. We are putting together a case study to evidence the impact of the work and to act as a tool for other communities wanting to create a similar project.

4 schools attended the 2018 Children’s Literature Festival and 1 took part in our Poetry Slam project. We are currently exploring ways to continue the relationships we have started to build in Frome, working with Chicken House on an author event in Frome for First and Middle Schools and will continue to share opportunities and resources with them.

Cost of project: £19,900 - £9,950 Paper Nations budget, £9,950 Frome Town Council

Bristol Children’s Hospital - Autumn 2017

Young people taking part: 15Pupils in receipt of Pupil Premium: not knownNumber of SEND pupils: not knownLead Artist: Jennifer LunnSessions: 4Length of session: day

Bath Festivals began working with Read for Good in 2014, working alongside our Children’s Literature Festival to provide author visits to the hospital as well as supporting them to promote their Readathons with our local schools. In 2017 Read for Good were exploring other projects and ways of working which led to us exploring how we can enable children in hospital to express their creativity and share it beyond the ward.

Read for Good have an established network of professional storytellers, and they suggested we worked with Jennifer Lunn, a storyteller whose practice involves an exchange of stories where Jen tells a story and then enables the children to create their own stories. Using a storyteller who already worked for Read for Good enabled an easier process into working in the hospital as permissions were already established and the relationship Read for Good had with the hospital meant there was a level of trust on the quality of what we planned to deliver.

Jen worked in the hospital school room and on the ward, sharing stories with the children and then inviting them to create their own story. We then collected these stories and published them in a book to enable the children to share their ideas and voices with the wider community. We celebrated the book with a launch event where Jennifer and 2 actors, and some of the children acted out the stories from the book to an audience of friends, family and other patients. The children also had a visit from one of our festival authors during the Bath Children’s Literature Festival.

The parents, teachers and children all really enjoyed taking part and seeing their work in print was a really special moment for them. They were keen to have more writers working in the hospital with the children.

“She sees herself as a writer/author i.e. that writing is something for everyone” parent responding to the question: What do you think about your child having a story in a book?

“Brilliant project” staff member

“Enjoyed seeing the age groups mixing and parents being involved” staff member

“I would like Jen to come again to help me” participant

Cost of Project: £2000, £1500 Paper Nations budget, £500 Read for Good

Fosse Way School – Spring 2018

Young people taking part: 25Pupils in receipt of Pupil Premium: not knownNumber of SEND pupils: 25Lead Artist: Jasbinder BilanSessions: 3Length of session: day

Jas Bilan got in touch with Paper Nations as a recent graduate of Bath Spa University’s MA programme, as she wanted to get involved with the project. Jas also teaches at Fosse Way School a special school that caters for children on the Autistic Spectrum and other additional needs.

We were keen to explore the possibility of delivering creative writing workshops with special schools and exploring what approaches work well for those young people who can find language and communication challenging.

The project took a little while to get off the ground, but during the interim period Jas won The Times/Chicken House Children’s Fiction Competition. She wanted to deliver some workshops around her novel and had a small budget from the school to do 1 day’s activities. We agreed to match this with Paper Nations project budget which funded 4 days of Jas’s time.

Jas wanted to set up these sessions in a different way to how she would normally work with them as a teacher in the school. She began the sessions with an illustrated presentation, which she used as a stimulus for discussion about the setting and characters in her novel. Following this she worked with smaller groups and used a variety of approaches to get the pupils to create their own stories. She created a nature table of sensory objects, and in groups they selected objects to create a story together, Jas encouraged the pupils to think about all their senses and took the pupils into the school grounds on a story walk. In further sessions the pupils sat at computers with an adult, who scribed for them whilst they created their stories, they also had the chance to create a front cover

and have their stories made into a book.

The sessions were often pinned around a strong framework for the writing, but with the freedom to take a different approach if the young person wanted to. This allowed for everyone to feel safe and have a structure to guide them through. The groups had plenty of time to brainstorm together, to go back to the sensory objects, and to share what they had created. The young people were very proud of what they had achieved and being able to see their writing go from initial idea to finished piece was significant for them.

Jas also created a set of story boxes for the teachers and pupils to use in school after the end of the project.

3 of the pupils’ pieces of creative writing were included in the Words on the Street Trail and the young people came as a group

to do the trail and see their work in situ. The writers were very excited to see their work displayed and got a real buzz from the experience.

Cost of project £1,000, £750 Paper Nations budget, £250 Fosse Way School.

Westfield Primary School – Spring & Summer 2018

Young people taking part: 38 (whole school on National Writing Day - 430 pupils)Pupils in receipt of Pupil Premium: 9Number of SEND pupils: 3Lead Artist: Alice MaddicottSessions: 20Length of session: half day

This project was established after a period of working with Westfield Primary School on a project called School Without Walls and a desire from Bath Festivals, Alice Maddicott and the school to continue the relationship and not to lose momentum for those children that were engaged with creative writing. Through School Without Walls and a Paper Nations project delivered by Alice with 5x5x5=creativity, 60 children at the school had built a relationship with Alice and had begun to really explore the potential of creative writing. We were interested in setting up a Creative Writing Club for those children, whilst exploring how we could embed a creative writing culture in the school.

Alice worked with a small group of Year 6 pupils who demonstrated enthusiasm and talent during the previous projects to further develop their creative writing skills and confidence. These children spent an afternoon each week working with Alice in the Spring terms. The group went on a trip to Stourhead, a National Trust property, to explore the grounds and use this as a stimulus for their writing. We also worked with the group to co-design activities for a whole school National Writing Day celebration, which we supported them to deliver.

Because the school were able to contribute financially, we were able to offer additional sessions. We delivered work with a Year 4 class, beginning their relationship with creative writing and used Alice’s approach of allowing each child to find their own voice and to celebrate that. The school was keen for Alice to work with the teacher, an NQT, for her professional development.

Alice also worked with a group of Special Needs children at a Creative Club set up after-school, this was borne out of the school’s desire that all children should have access to high quality creative writing activity. This club started with a trip to see The Little Mermaid, a play at the egg Theatre, and then Alice used this experience as a starting point for the children to create their own stories and characters.

For all the children involved, many of whom were vulnerable learners, their confidence was raised through the project, and in many cases, they surprised themselves and their teachers / parents in what they were able to create and achieve. Alice’s approach is focused on the development of each person and their own creativity, finding each child’s way into writing, and demonstrating the possibilities it can offer them. This approach had positive results with each group she worked with.

The SEND group was particularly successful, and the TA who worked alongside Alice, decided to continue the sessions beyond the end of the project, and felt much more confident to do so, having learnt from Alice’s approach.

The school is keen to continue developing their approach to creativity, and creative writing as an integral part of that. We have written a case study on this project to demonstrate its best practice.

Cost of Project: £4,000, £3,000 Paper Nations budget, £1,000 Westfield Primary School

Bath Children’s Literature Festival Poetry Slam - Sept/Oct 2018

Young people taking part: 231Pupils in receipt of Pupil Premium: not knownNumber of SEND pupils: not knownLead Artists: Rebecca Tantony, Jonny Fluffypunk, Liv TorcSessions: 7Length of session: half day

National Poetry Day fell within the festival this year and we were looking for a way to celebrate it. We wanted to give young people the opportunity to create their own poetry and share that on stage at the festival. We worked with Rebecca Tantony to help us develop the format for the Slam and to create a resource pack to share with the schools taking part.

We offered workshops to participating schools to inspire the children and get them writing poems for performance. 4 schools worked with a poet: Widcombe Juniors and Oldfield Park Juniors worked with Jonny Fluffypunk, Selwood Academy worked with Liv Torc and Shoscombe Primary worked with Rebecca Tantony. Each school received a half day workshop for each class they wanted us to work with. The schools then held their own in school Slams to choose 2 or 3 winners to perform in the grand final at the festival. We also had 2 schools, St John’s Catholic Primary and Westfield Primary who took part but didn’t have a workshop.

The workshops went down really well and got lots of children excited about writing and performing poetry.

“They LOVED the workshop and were really glad to take part in the slam and would like to be involved next year” Widcombe Junior School

The final was held at the Guildhall, judged by local poet Beth Calverley, one of the festival volunteers who is also an author Alex Diaz and Hazel Plowman, Head of Creative Learning. Rebecca Tantony hosted the event. We spilt the performers into 2 rounds and then chose a winner from each round. The 2 winners went on to compete against each other for the title.

It was a really positive event, the children were engaged and enjoyed the experience of performing and giving their feedback as the audience, which created a lively atmosphere in the venue. There was a visible sense of pride and achievement.

We are keen to repeat the project for next year and build it into a regular feature of our Schools Programme. We need to ensure the project is launched earlier so more schools are able to get involved and look at the event and whether it would be enhanced by a performance by a professional poet as well as the children.

Cost of Project: £2106.15, £1986.15 Paper Nations Budget, £120 Schools contribution.

Reflections on Best Practice

Reflecting on the 9 projects Bath Festivals produced during Paper Nations 2015-18, we can begin to draw out what makes these projects work and the common threads that enable this.

Trust

It is significant to observe that 7 out of the 9 projects took place with schools or organisations we had worked with in the past, and 5 of these were ones we had worked with on a regular basis. These previous relationships and the time taken to cultivate them, meant that there was a level of trust between the partners and that they viewed the relationship as a partnership, where each person understood what their role was and how it fit into the wider picture.

Some of the projects were made possible by exploring and utilising established links (e.g. using Bath Spa as a connection with Hayesfield or using an already established relationship with Read for Good to develop a deeper piece of work), whilst others were about making connections and allowing projects to grow from these impulses. There is also evidence of other organisations coming to us for our experience (Mentoring Plus for Wisdom of Youth).

Young People Centred

It is important that the young people feel ownership over the work, and that they are writing about things that are meaningful to them. Where the projects were most successful was where this was embedded in the way the writers approached working with the young people and where we set out to achieve this. The longer-term projects and those with smaller groups had the additional benefits of enabling greater opportunities for the writer to build relationships with the young people. The positive relationships built can enable trust and greater engagement from the groups.

Working with writers

Writers are in the world making real work for real audiences, and their ability to share this and demonstrate that this is possible is really significant for children and young people. The writers we worked with are all doing this in different ways but there is always interest and engagement around what writers do when they are not in the classroom with the children.

Throughout all the projects we created an atmosphere or environment that was different to school, even when we delivered within a classroom setting. The writer is not a teacher, they come to the group without history and a fresh approach and perspective. Everyone can benefit from that different way of working. Often, those children and young people who find the classroom challenging can have the opportunity to grow and to shine through writers’ different approaches. This was demonstrated in many of our projects.

The writers involved in all the projects, whilst they all have their own practice and ways of delivery, have a shared ethos with the Creative Learning department at Bath Festivals. The writers we chose put young people at the heart of their practice and understood our goal of empowering children and young people to feel like they were writers and that their writing had value.

Collaboration

Where our projects are at their most successful the partners are collaborators, there is respect and understanding of the value of each partner’s expertise and an acknowledgment that we can achieve more collectively. There is a shared ethos, a desire to make the project work, and a level of trust in each other.

Likewise, the delivery of the project is a collaboration between the teacher, the writer and the young people. An ongoing conversation between them. The young people’s responses, engagement and enthusiasm or lack of it feeds into how the writer and teacher develop the project session by session.

With each project the planning time to build relationships and ways of working were all important in enabling the projects to be successful. We acknowledge that working side by side and communicating regularly throughout the process makes for a happier team, and that if the team is enjoying the process, the benefits are borne out in the delivery of the work and the quality of the experience for the young people.

Celebration

It works well when the projects have an opportunity for celebration. This can be working towards something from the beginning or just finding a way for sharing work at the end. This could be a publication, such as the one we created with Bristol Children’s Hospital or the St Marks students creating a magazine page during their visit to Bath Spa University. It could be an assembly or sharing in class, such as Westfield pupils reading their work on National Writing Day. Or the projects could have a more public profile, such as a performance at a festival or the Words on the Street trail we created. The way we celebrated the young people’s achievements isn’t as important as the fact that we did give them a platform for doing so.

Reflective Practice

All of the projects we produced value the process of reflection, and where possible we integrate this into the writer’s brief. Reflecting on what happened in a session and sharing that with the partners on a project enables us to question the best ways of working with a group and to find the best ways to develop the work that allow the young people to grow and flourish.

Case Studies/Longer evaluations linked to these projects can be found in the Appendix.

2. Celebration Events

Over the course of the 3 years Bath Festivals delivered 3 major celebration events alongside numerous other opportunities linked to our festivals which enabled us to spread the word about Paper Nations and most importantly celebrate and encourage children and young people’s writing journeys. From debates and performances to exhibitions and free notebooks we reached over 4300 people getting them writing and communicating the value of writing in children and young people’s lives.

Creative Writing Feast

Paper Nations was launched at this event on March 2nd 2016 as part of Bath Literature Festival. The event was held in Komedia to an audience of 119 invited guests.

Bambo Soyinka, director for the project, and the Vice Chancellor of Bath Spa University opened the event. This was followed by a performance of spoken word poetry by students from St Marks School and young people from Mentoring Plus. The St Marks students had worked with poet Rebecca Tantony to create poems especially for the event.

David Almond in his capacity as Creative Writing Champion for the project then spoke about the importance of creative

writing in schools, and young people feeling empowered by being able to express themselves through words and stories.

This was followed by Creative Conversations facilitated by a writer on each table at the event. The conversations explored the tagline for the project: A Creative Nation for Young Writers’ and some of the following questions: How do we work together to build this nation? How do we empower young people to take a leading role? How do we deliver a whole school, whole community, whole university approach where everyone becomes an agent for a change? How can we put creative writing in schools on the national map?

The event closed with info on how to get involved and networking.

How do we keep creative writing alive in our schools?

As part of Bath Children’s Literature Festival, we produced a panel discussion on How Can We Keep Creative Writing Alive In Our Schools? which took place at the Guildhall on 4 October 2016. The

panel was made up of David Almond (author and Creative Writing Champion for Paper Nations), Francesca Beers (deputy head teacher at Easton CE Academy), Jake Bishop Ponte (Member of Youth Parliament for B&NES), Bethany Tavener (volunteer youth worker in B&NES who worked on a poetry project with young people) and Julia Eccleshare (Children’s Book Editor at The Guardian) who chaired the event. The event was free but ticketed. The lively engaged audience of 120 consisted of teachers,

parents, writers and cultural centres, as well as the Mayor of Bath and the Chairman of B&NES Council. Within the room there was a clear sense of the need for this debate, the importance of young people having access to creative activity within and outside of school, and a desire from the audience to take positive action to make this happen. There was sharing of ideas and support amongst the panellists and audience.

Notebooks & Pencils at Bath Children’s Literature Festival 2016

In addition across the festival Paper Nations’ public engagement team handed out Paper Nations notebooks and pencils to children and young people before and after events and encouraged them to start their own writing journey. Paper Nations was also engaged with the festival’s schools programme through outreach events and children and young people from the Schools Programme who received notebooks were very engaged and immediately started drawing and writing. The team handed out 1000 notebooks over the course of the festival.

Dare to Write at Family Arts Day, The Bath Festival 2017

Family Arts Day is an annual event held in Parade Gardens as part of The Bath Festival. The event in May gives children and their families an opportunity to explore different art forms in a relaxed informal setting.

As part of the 2017 Family Arts Day we invited the Dare to Write Library to be part of the event, integrating Bath Festivals work on the Paper Nations project with the festival.

Lily Green & Roxanne Barbon from Book Kernel and writer Alice Maddicott ran the Dare to Write Library activities at the event. Together they supported families to create their own origami books and to explore a selection of ‘dares’ or extracts

to inspire their own story, transforming that tale into their own book. They could then add their books to the Dare to Write Library, take it home to read later or swap their own booklets for the tales of others. Families were also invited to create their own writing dares for future storymakers taking up the Dare to Write Library challenge! Children and adults were really engaged and spent sustained time in the library creating books and stories.

Dare to Write library in the Theatre Bus at Bath Children’s Literature Festival 2017

Building on the success of the Dare to Write library at Family Arts Day, we hired the Theatre Bus for one weekend of the Children’s Literature Festival and filled it with reading and writing activities. The Theatre Bus is a bus that has been refurbished into a flexible theatre space, we were able to take out some of the seats and create space for a workshop table as well as a drawing wall and space for families to sit and read some of the festival books. As a festival we were keen to provide free activities alongside our ticketed events and the Dare to Write Library provided this. Families popped in on their way between events to create stories with us. 182 people visited the bus over the weekend.

Words on the Street Trail at The Bath Festival 2018

For our final major celebration event we wanted to make the work of the children and young people more visible to the public, so rather than put on an event behind closed doors we decided to put the work out in the city centre by creating a trail of children and young people’s writing.

We invited all the schools who had taken part in Paper Nations to enter poems or short pieces of writing to be included in the trail. We chose 10 pieces from the entries

that represented the different schools, that would have impact and work in the context of the trail.

We created a map of the sites, which was printed and distributed at the locations as well as at Bath Box Office, we also created stickers for those who had completed the trail. We worked with illustrators Megan Swann and Holly Stocker to create illustrations to accompany the pieces.

The 10 pieces were printed large scale A0 and we added illustrations to their displays. One of the pieces was shown in My Small World toy shop and they created a themed window display around it. 2 of the pieces were printed on to banners and displayed wrapped around trees.

We were able to create a Pop-Up shop in Milsom Place as part of the trail and we created a space for children and families to get writing and play with words that was open on Saturdays throughout the festival and we had 75 people take part, with some children really engaged in creating stories.

Fosse Way School visited the trail during the festival to see the pieces we had included and to visit the Pop-Up Shop, they were very excited to see their work on display in the city centre.

Album of images available here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bathfestivals/albums/72157668842548027

Dare to Write notebooks at Bath Children’s Literature Festival 2018

We gave out over 2000 notebooks to children and young people during the festival and engaged teachers and authors in the Dare to Write campaign through dissemination of information about the online platform. Teachers were very positive about the idea and the opportunity to encourage the children to start a writing journey. Authors such as MG Leonard, Frank Cottrell Boyce and Chris Riddell were engaged in the idea using the notebooks themselves or talking about the importance of notebooks in their events.

3. Reflections on my role within Bath Festivals, Paper Nations and the wider Creative Writing Ecology

Role within Bath Festivals

As Head of Creative Learning at Bath Festivals my job is to produce projects with children and young people related to our 2 festivals: The Bath Festival and Bath Children’s Literature Festival. The projects we deliver take place all year round and use the festivals as a starting point or an opportunity for celebration. The work is focused around the main art forms of our festivals: literature and music.

The projects are varied in scope and approach but underlined with the principles of increasing children and young people’s access to the arts and providing opportunities for them to explore their own creativity and connect with their community. During the Bath Children’s Literature Festival, we produce a Schools Programme delivering over 20 author events to schools from 4 neighbouring counties. We also deliver longer term creative writing projects in schools, for example a 10-week spoken word poetry project in a secondary school culminating in a performance or publication. We run a regular Young Writers Lab, monthly writing sessions on a Saturday.

Much of this work goes on behind the scenes, away from the spotlight of the festival and can be unseen by the general public but it is a significant part of the charitable status of the festival.

The festival provides many opportunities for the projects we deliver and enables relationships with writers and artists, as well as chances for children and young people’s voices to be celebrated on the same stage as professional writers and performers. This adds value to the work they create and boosts self-esteem and confidence.

My role is fundamentally about providing opportunities and ensuring children and young people have quality experiences. As a significant Arts Organisation in our local area there is also a responsibility to support schools and community groups to access the arts in a way that makes it easy for them, that acknowledges the challenges and strengths that each group has and works with those. That might be exploring how best to match appropriate writers or artists, how to make things practical, or how to add extra value.

Building projects involves building relationships, making connections, knowing who or what can elevate a project and make it special, weaving together a team and an atmosphere that will hold the team safely enough for them to take an explorative journey into an art form and find a place for themselves within it.

Role within Paper Nations

As a partner on the Paper Nations project, I had the opportunity to deliver 9 projects in schools and 7 events and engagement opportunities. Alongside this I was given time to reflect on my work and its role within the Creative Writing Ecology. The project and event work served as a piece of action research, allowing me to observe and reflect on what best practice looked like in these 2 areas, feeding into the thinking I was engaged in. I was also part of the Governance group working on Paper Nations which allowed me to share my approaches and experience with a wider group of people (principally the main partners Bath Spa University and NAWE) on a regular basis.

The partnership with Bath Spa University also provided an opportunity to be part of the Writing Ambassador Training programme and deliver a session around partnerships and networks alongside Nick Sorensen, Associate Dean, Institute of Education.

Working on Paper Nations gave the partners insights into the different approaches and ways of working we each have. As a Festival we are usually working towards an end product, with a fixed set of deadlines and time-scales and that can restrict how we work. Contrasting that, the research focused approach of a University is an evolving process of continuous learning and thinking.

As a team of 1 person there is relatively little time to reflect and think about the impact of the work and my role within that process. The opportunity this project gave me to do this was invaluable. I now have a much clearer idea of what the role is, and what its value is. I know how describe it and what roles in other industries it relates to. I understand that it has a creative process and what the significance of that is. I see how I enable and broker relationships between schools and artists.

All of this is incredibly empowering. To know why something has value enables you to demonstrate that more clearly and to be more vocal for its place within an organisation both internally and externally.

Links and Networks

Delivering projects across two art forms widens access to best practice and throughout the process of reflecting on my role, I used experiences and resources from both art forms. For example, working on a Youth Music funded project meant I was familiar with the Youth Music framework, and I integrated learning from this when working on the Writers Development Canvas and on a Code of Practice for the Dare to Write website. Whilst Paper Nations were exploring the idea of a Hub and what that might look like, it was also useful to explore Music Education Hubs and my involvement in the B&NES Music Hub and work with colleagues at Bristol Plays Music all fed into the research.

During Paper Nations 2016-18, I was also involved in a network run by Serious called Serious About Partnership. This network was centred around learning departments in organisations across the country that deliver work in contemporary music. The work of this network has been exploring our context and priorities for Learning and Participation, including raising the profile of our work internally and externally. This opportunity to be part of this network whilst working on Paper Nations meant that the learning gained from each was woven into the other.

Serious about Partnership also highlighted the benefits of networking with other people working in your field in different locations. Whilst working on a regional picture of Creative Writing, it highlighted the need for a network of people who are delivering Creative Writing with children & young people across the South West region. We established the Joined-Up Writing network in March 2018.

Appendix

a) Case Study: St Marks School (a version of this case study was also published in NAWE’s magazine Writing in Education, issue 75)

b) Westfield Primary School Writing Projects – an evaluation