Fighting Words is a charity set up by the writer Roddy Doyle to use creative writing to strengthen children and teenagers to be resilient, resourceful and successful shapers of their own lives.
They are offering free workshops and mentoring to youth/community groups working with young people. In their story-making workshops, groups of children and young people invent the beginning of a story together though a lively and engaging collaborative process. Then the new writers, with their imaginations fired up and full of excitement, continue their story individually with the encouragement of enthusiastic volunteer mentors. The children have space to be creative without any pressure or corrections, to write just for fun.
There is also a teenager Write Clubs for playwrights, prose and poetry, and journalism, which are offered online and in-person at the organisation’s creative space in the Skainos building, Lower Newtownards Road, Belfast.
Disadvantaged communities
Fighting Words NI is developing a new project especially for disadvantaged communities which will give 50 free Fighting Words workshops in 2022 to 500 children living in Inner East Belfast and the border counties, aged 6-18.
With the new Writing the Future project, they hope to create connections between children across alienated communities and pull their writing together for a final showcase and celebration with other groups from across Northern Ireland.
The organisation would love to speak with you more about the project and to discuss whether your group might be interested in being involved in the next few months, either by:
- volunteering as Fighting Words mentors
- or through having us deliver story-making workshops for the children and young people in your community.
If interested, email Niamh Scullion on community@fightingwords.co.uk