Axe Valley: Let’s get Political

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! Over 10 weeks, we formed ourselves into four brand new parties that spanned the political spectrum. We worked with writers, editors, a political Journalist, a speech writer and even a couple of David Bowie obsessives to create a foolproof guide to finding your tribe, taking power and changing the world (or at least your little part of it).

We had an absolute blast working with these talented students and we expect to see several of them in the House of Commons (or Barnard Castle) very soon.

Huge thanks goes to Harry Vincent for his assistance with our speech writing, Rob Kemp for his advice on how to hold politicians to account (and how to avoid answering Journalists questions), as well as to Matt Brown and all the staff at Axe Valley Academy for facilitating this wonderful series of workshops. The writing the students at Axe Valley produce always blows us away! We can’t wait to get this invaluable political guide into our hands.

As always, the group were ably assisted by a team of incredible volunteer writing mentors and so the biggest thanks to Lizzie, Valerie, Denise, Raja and Jon for lending the group their unwavering support and expertise.