The Ironworks

I’m sitting here at just after one in the morning and I’m feeling very proud. I’ve been wanting to post this for a couple of weeks but I’ve had website problems and work and life are often louder voices than the blog but the voices are sleeping now and the gremlins have been appeased.

So, a couple of weeks ago I was at The Ironworks – an enormous building at the Elsecar Heritage Centre – with around 250 primary school children and their teachers and the then mayor of Barnsley and it was one of the proudest moments of my career. Since November I’ve been working in schools for Hear My Voice – an amazing project for the Dearne Valley Landscape Partnership, and Barnsley Museums. We’ve been writing about home – and all that that means, and I know I’ve mentioned it on here a few times now so I’ll not go into too much detail but we looked at what home meant – it’s not just the buildings we live in, or the towns those buildings are in. Home can be anything. Where we feel dafe or happy. Where our friends are, or families. Or not, as the case may be.

I worked with eight schools: Dearne Goldthorpe, Ivanhoe, Holy Rood, Ladywood, Summer Lane, Cherrydale, Worsbrough, and Hoyland all over the Dearne Valley – from Barnsley to Doncaster, Grimethorpe, to Rotherham and we talked about home. And then we wrote about home. And not how we wrote! Poems, stories. And they were all amazing. And we made them into books. Over 50,000 words were written and typed up and the best thing was, the thing I was most proud of was that every single thing that every young writer produced was brilliant. That’s well over 200 children – over 200 individual voices – 800 pieces of literary brilliance.

The teaching side of being a writer is something I love – that’s why I’ve been doing it for so long. Because, for once, it’s not about me or my words. It’s about other people’s. And the best thing about teaching? Meeting people, hearing about how they see the world. Giving them the means and the confidence to write about it. Helping them to realise that we all have something to say and that we can all say it well and that what we want to say – our voices – all deserve to be heard. Or maybe it’s the opportunity to actually change lives for the better. I know there were writers there who wouldn’t have wanted to share their work before, or who might not have thought they were good enough, or doubted they had anything to say.

And so, back to The Ironworks. All the children, the teachers and assistants (it’s a shame the receptionists couldn’t have been there because they were brilliant with me too) – the team from Barnsley Museums (Alison, Jemma, Vicky – thank you!) – and everyone else. They were all there. And the writers received copies of their books and they received their Arts Award certificates and they read their work in an enormous venue to an enormous crowd and not one faltered or fluffed a single line. And that takes some doing when you’re a professional, let alone in Year 2, or 3, 4, 5, or 6. (And I’ll be honest, I’d love crowds that big when I read!)

So, yes. I am proud. And you, young writers, should be too. You were BRILLIANT. No – I got that wrong. You are brilliant. Don’t you dare stop.

 

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Added: And you can read ALL of their AMAZING work here.SaveSaveSaveSave

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