Featured Volunteer: Clive Whaley – a man of many parts.

Clive hails from the Northeast of England, the middle of three children in what he calls a ‘standard working-class family’. His father was a practical man, an apprentice ‘plater’ who worked his way up the business to become Managing Director of Whaley Welding. Clive did not follow in his footsteps but did share his love of sports. An anathema to the rest of the family, Clive’s interests were in reading and learning; he studied politics at Lancaster University, but politics was not a passion, and he was more interested in neutral observation than political activism. He mixed mostly with English students and aspired to writing; having only experimented with songwriting as a guitar-playing teenager, he didn’t know what to do and his parents were unable to offer any guidance. Had the Bank of dreams and Nightmares existed then, he said, his life might have taken a different path, or he might have found his way more easily.

With around half of the world (4 billion people across 76 countries) voting in 2024, the amazing students at Axe Valley, have thrown their own hats into the political ring. We worked with a group of politically motivated Year 9s to write a ‘How To…’ guide to starting your own political party, getting elected and staying out of trouble!

We are delighted to hear that one of our amazing volunteers has spread the word about the Children’s Democratic Republic of Bridport right across the other side of the world!

With a very brave group of writers from Budmouth Academy in Weymouth, we attempted something we’ve never done before - a sequel! We know that number 2s are usually never as good as the first one, but this one bucks the trend. The catchily titled “Daisy the Pig’s Revenge On Peter the Griffin (A Bacon Baguette 2)” was an absolute blast to write and, in keeping with the tradition of sequels, it’s bigger, louder and even sillier than the original.

Friday night saw the official launch of a brave new world! The culmination of weeks of hard work from our summer school participants was the launch of our brand new country, The Children’s Democratic Republic of Bridport, and on Friday we opened the doors of our embassy in the centre of Bridport to an excited crowd.

Voices at the ready! This week we were delighted to be able to launch our latest publication; SONGBANK, an album of a cappella songs and spoken word poetry written and composed by an absurdly talented bunch of young poets and songwriters from Broadwindsor Primary School.

We had an absolute blast working with a group of home educated writers in Axminster last week. Their story, entitled ‘What’s Real?’, took us on an amazing journey into the world of dimensional jumps, world-hopping and competitive gymnastics.

We had a brilliant time working with the young writers at Membury and Mrs Ethelston’s Primary Schools last week. We were due to have a visit from our Bank Manager, but when he ended up getting trapped in his own vault, we had to enlist the pupils to help get him out! Their inventiveness and ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking not only freed our Bank Manager, but it also helped the group to come up with a survival guide for a whole range of sticky situations

We are very excited to launch the first ever edition of Beaminster School’s new newspaper, The Beaminster Bureau. The writing is first class and we are so proud of all the amazing young journalists from Year 9. The articles in this issue range from national current affairs to local school and town ‘hot topics’. The professionalism and journalistic bravery shown by our fearless news hounds was wonderful; they asked the hard questions in a measured, neutral capacity and while they were skilled enough to secure the high profile people to talk to, they weren’t afraid to speak truth to power in the interviews themselves.

What a brilliant morning we had at Merriott Primary School. We worked with Monarch Class on a dark tale of vampirism, grumpy children and Kung-Fu cheese eating. Superb! ‘Pure Chaos’, tells the tale of a vampire, wronged by royalty and out for revenge.

We are very excited to be working with a talented group of writers from Wadham School in Crewkerne on a fantastic science writing project. These Year 9 students are using stories to explain the facts behind the Primary Physics curriculum.

We visited Haselbury Plucknett Primary School this week, to work with their brilliant Year 5s and 6s. The pupils worked their socks off and came up with a great story with a twist that no-one saw coming. Worthy of Agatha Christie, The Perilous Party is a classic old time murder mystery…or is it?

We had a great time on Friday, working with a fantastic bunch of writers from Salway Ash Primary School. The collective writing talents of Year 3 from Badger Class, came together to create an incredible tale of intrigue and extreme boredom, entitled Paranoid Pickle.