What makes home, Home? What’s the very best thing about where you live? Is it a destination, a comfy familiarity, or is it the vibe, the community, the people? We have been asking the amazing pupils from Radipole Primary School to consider and respond to this question through poetry, as part of their school focus: “Love Where You Live”.

Wolves circling, trapped inside a damp cave, a haunted house on the horizon, and with only a cute little chick to protect him. It wasn’t looking good for Bear Man when the Year 3s and 4s at Portesham started their story. Thankfully, this team of young writers were able to use their collective imagination and creative skills to write this story to a happy, and truly bizarre conclusion. Turns out, Little Timmy is made of sterner stuff than you might think!

We were back at The Prince of Wales School this week where we got to work with a fantastic group of Year 3s. Having last worked with them on creating characters, this time we launched straight into writing a full blown story. The group did not disappoint! Working together, they crafted an exciting tale of giant cockroaches, mega-boosted bathtubs, and Potato Donkey Kong.

‘The Writers’ Account’ is a group of young writers which meets every Wednesday after school to experiment with words.  Most sessions begin with a warm-up exercise followed by a prompt with encourages the young writers to develop a longer piece of work.  Every few weeks however, there is a masterclass with a professional writer and these fantastic sessions mean that the members of the group can learn more about what a writer’s life is like and how to develop a career, as well as receive individual encouragement for their own work. 

We had an absolute blast working with Hazel Class from St Catherine’s RC Primary School in Bridport. ‘The Sushi Snatch’, tells the bizarre and heartbreaking tale of a monster with a crippling phobia of ‘people-who-have-names’. Facing an impossible choice between saving his friend from a bully and keeping that friendship alive, our hero is forced to make a sacrifice that will set him and his nemesis on a terrible path. Can their friendship be re-captured? Has he finally defeated his arch-enemy? Or is Octopus Dave’s reign of terror only just beginning?

Working with a group of young journalists at Bridport Primary School, the Bank of Dreams & Nightmares is helping them to start their own School Newspaper. Our latest after school club is helping some enthusiastic writers to choose stories, conduct interviews, and write articles that will celebrate and uncover exciting developments in the school, Bridport and the wider world. In development are: sports reports, movie reviews, hard hitting articles and even cute pets.

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