It was great to have Helen Cann join us today to deliver a special map making workshop for the young writers creating their Alternative Guidebook to Weymouth. The book is beginning to take shape with a mix of reviews, interviews, maps, fiction and non fiction stories and even a playlist to listen to as you discover the secret places to Weymouth. Due for release in the New Year, so stay tuned for updates.

In October Bridport hosted its first TEDx speakers event and Nick was very honoured to take his place alongside Matt Smith, Jyoti Fernandez, Anna Ledgard, and Alison Lapper MBE.

We are super proud to be sharing with you our promo film we made for the wonderful project we delivered with Stuff & Nonsense theatre company.

Yesterday we had our first ever SKETCH COMEDY WRITING workshop led by professional writers Nat Saunders and James Serafinowicz at St John Colfox school.

The brilliant Shipton class at Bridport Primary School created a wonderful story in our workshop about Derek the Werewolf and his battle with the sludge monster. Big thanks to Amberley Carter for leading, Hugh Dunford Wood for illustrating and Kate, Raja and Jon for being such great story mentors.

We are so happy to have partnered with @bridlitfestival to share some of the stories written by young writers in our workshops. Featured on their website today, Finn reads 'Girl in the fog' by Elodie Oldbury from the anthology 'I have a Dream'. There will be a new reading each day of the festival so make sure you check them all out at www.bridlit.com or click here to watch the film.

#bridportliteraryfestival #thebankofdreamsandnightmares#creativewriting

Lu Orza joins me at the Bridport Literary and Science Institute to chat about being our October Featured Volunteer. “What an honour! Yes exciting, I’m really pleased” she exclaimed.. 

It is very exciting to be honest, as we finally have the proof copy of the first issue of our quarterly newspaper created by the after school club. It looks absolutely awesome and we can’t wait to get the final copies out to everyone.

It was a real pleasure to work children from all the year groups at Greenford Primary school this week. They created the wonderful story called “Sushi Emergency” all about Timmy the tortoise.

What an absolutely lovely and inspiring event hosted by the team at Ministry of Stories in London. I think the over riding word that came out of the two day conference was: JOY!

For our second session with Budmouth academy we took the young writers on a walking tour around Weymouth. Well actually they took us on a walking tour, and we even got to taste some Bubble Tea!

Have you ever been to Weymouth? Do you think you know all the great places to visit? We are spending the next 10 weeks with a group of twenty young writers from Budmouth Academy to create their own Guidebook to Weymouth.

For our second session with the scouts we created a storybook with beautiful illustrations by Emily Stewart.

We are thrilled to be collaborating with Beaminster scouts to obtain their creative writing badges. The first session we created Haiku’s and they came up with some crackers.

It was great to be back doing Storymaking Workshops again this week. We had a wonderful time with Seatown and Cogden class at Powerstock school creating their fantastic story about a beautiful Doe called Leah and her run ins with Mr Chicken Who-Likes-Cheese (the evil wizard), and the karate-kicking bunny called Cheeks!

“As soon I heard about it, I thought, this is for me,” Raja explains. “I had been developing skills as an amateur storyteller, which was interrupted by COVID, and I missed the storytelling community. The Bank offered a way of getting back into something I loved doing.”

We had a wonderful time during our last two Food Glorious Food! workshops at Salway Ash school; pupils ages 7-11 worked incredibly hard to bring together their own food stories to complement the recipes they’d brought in.

We had a fantastic launch event to herald publication day of Spiralling: A Slow Descent into Madness, the anthology of eerie fiction penned by Year 9 students from Sir John Colfox School.

The second week of our Food, Glorious Food! project with Salway Ash Primary School was a busy mix of sharing experiences and writing. The youngsters brought in recipes and talked about why they were an important part of their lives.

Our primary school storymaking workshops are one of BODAN’s flagship fun creative writing sessions, in which a class of children in Key Stage 2 (ages 7-11) become published authors in a single morning, with a fully illustrated book given to each participant.