Big Issues for the Big Write

We were asked to get involved with Woodroffe School’s Big Write, an annual event for the whole of Year 8 - 150+ pupils. We went straight for the serious stuff and asked Clive Stafford-Smith, founder and director of human rights law charity 3DC, to kick off the day with a talk to the entire cohort. Clive focused on the death penalty and outlined case studies of wrongly-convicted men currently on death row. Truly sobering and inspirational stuff, which we then took into the writing workshops with the students.

In the non-fiction element of our group session, we looked at speeches, asking the young writers to give their opinion on the death penalty using language skills to persuade.

In the second half we turned to fiction. We discussed the idea that we only know one small part of a death row prisoner’s life, in the same way we know only a tiny part of the lives of people around us, yet judgements are often made on singular moments or snapshots. From this discussion, the students created characters with back story, and wrote first-person fictional accounts of how they felt to be on death row.

These powerful letters and diary entries were recorded as Podcasts, which you can listen to on our SoundCloud page. It was a fantastic day and we hope to be back in Woodroffe school next academic year, to continue our creative writing enrichment across all year groups. Enormous thanks to Clive Stafford-Smith for giving his time and knowledge in such an engaging presentation to inspire young minds.