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.

This newsletter’s Featured Volunteer is Eddy Pearce, whose poignant photos have celebrated those moments of joy, disbelief and so much more at our book launches, performances, and recordings.

We were so impressed by the amazing Year 7s at Budmouth Academy who worked with us on Friday to write a tale of terrifying dragons, mutant horrors and poisoned sandwiches. Their story, ‘A Bacon Baguette in the Deep Dark Woods’, follows Peter the Griffin and his best friend Daisy as they encounter unpleasant creatures and scary goings on in the forest near their farm.

We were extremely proud to be able to launch our latest anthology of short stories on Tuesday. Written by an absurdly talented group of writers from Beaminster School, 30 Shades of Green imagines a future where nature is changed or where our human nature has undergone alteration.

Very pleased to be able to help promote the important work of Mr Clearview and his team from the National Independent Transparent Window Inspection Team as they went into Salway Ash School last week.

We felt like proper rock stars taking our group of Year 6s from Broadwindsor Primary School to record an album of their songs on Friday. The Songbank team got to lay down their tracks at the achingly cool Echotown Studios outside Dorchester and they really excelled themselves!

We’ve been having a lot of fun working with a group of enthusiastic young journalists from Beaminster School, creating a brand new print publication. This group of tenacious news-hounds are digging the dirt and uncovering the truth of everything from how the cost of living increase is affecting businesses in Beaminster, to whatever happened to the Beaminster Swimming Pool.

Wednesday saw us working with some politicians in the making. The Year 4s at Salway Ash Primary School were reading ‘Cloud Tea Monkeys’ by Elspeth Graham and Mal Peet but the monkeys had disappeared. Who would now help Tashi pick the Cloud Tea from the tops of the trees?

The launch parties for our new anthology of subversive verses have been wonderful! We’re so proud of everyone who worked with a poet to create such a powerful anthology. The launches have been both celebrations of the amazing writers who contributed to this anthology, and testament to the power of poetry to address societal issues, big and small, head on without fear.

We went to Salway Ash Primary this week to talk about creating characters. We worked with their brilliant Year 3s until we were interrupted by a call from our Bank Manager; someone had broken into the vault! The children gathered the evidence left by the intruder and they all worked together to create… Sprinkles, the Donut Reindeer!

Valerie is a local playwright, director, producer and retired drama teacher. Since signing up with The Bank less than six months ago, she has become a leading lady amongst our volunteers and has been a regular on nearly all our secondary school workshops and at The Vault – the after-school journalism club at the LSi.

It’s International Poetry Day and we’re celebrating the official release of our latest publication - ‘Speak Up!’ This amazing anthology of subversive verse has been written by some extremely talented poets from Axe Valley Academy, Badmouth Academy and Sir John Colfox Academy. Each group got to work with a professional poet with one simple brief, to write a poem that will change the world. No pressure there, then!