Context

Walkden High School is a secondary school in Salford, Manchester. It is also a specialist language college.

Aims & principles

• To encourage students to develop their writing
• To use visual art as a stimulus for writing
• To teach students how to write their own narrative
• To teach the importance of re-drafting and editing

In Practice

Writer Mandy Coe worked for one day with three small groups of ‘Gifted and Talented’ Year 8 students. The school curriculum was collapsed for the day and the project took place at Manchester Art Gallery.  Students used the different works of art in the gallery as inspiration for their creative writing.

The students spent the morning walking around the gallery gathering ideas for their individual pieces of writing, which could take any form they chose. Mandy used techniques such as encouraging the students to look at the paintings as if they were videos on ‘pause’, and then asking them to press ‘play’, which encouraged the students to look closely at the detail in front of them and to see and think beyond what they saw. The students then gathered into groups to work on editing and re-drafting their work.

The afternoon session took place in studio rooms where the pupils used the notes and ideas gathered in the morning to write their own narrative. Mandy helped them to develop their ideas and structure their pieces by providing a list of questions for them to answer.

Attitudes and attainment after the project

The project was a great success and the students produced work of remarkable quality, building three-dimensional narratives in an incredibly short space of time.

The choice of location and stimulus was clearly effective. The choice of location Beyond its practical merits, it also provided what Mandy calls “a reinforcement that culture is not simply to be consumed; it is to be created and responded to. The students also took on board that writing is prompted by everything around us; its process does not always start or finish with the page.”

Legacy

The school is now planning on setting up a regular creative writing group.

Final thought

The title of the project ‘A Whole Day Writing’ was off-putting to the students as they worried that they would literally have to write all day- this could be re-worded so as to be more indicative of what the project really involved.

“Three days with young people in a public place with no students (or adults) lost, cross, sad or told off! The children seemed to feel safe and motivated. They also felt brave enough to read out their work. Lots of laughs, lots of work and many new techniques tackled.” — Class Teacher

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