TEXT: Professional writers in schools project

The project aims to:

• Bring professional writers and young people together.
• Harness the best of professional practice to the fertile imaginations of the young
• Empower young voices through the medium of the written word
• Make writing fun, interesting and stimulating with topics and experiences which challenge students' creativity
• Produce outcomes which give young people a real sense of achievement and which are given a high value by being exposed to a public audience/readership.

TEXT is funded by the Cripplegate Foundation and supported by CEA@Islington. It offers residencies by professional writers of between 6 and 10 days a term in primary and secondary schools.

Schools in the Cripplegate area of benefit can apply for funding for the residencies from their Cripplegate allocation of money.

Schools in other areas of the borough of Islington can also participate in the TEXT project, receive advice, be matched with a suitable writer and receive project management from the TEXT project co-ordinator, but will need to fund the project from their own or other funds.

Some recent examples of the TEXT project include:

• Engaging with the moral dilemmas contained in popular fairy tales (year 5 and 6 pupils)
• Following the history trail of the first black headteacher in England (year 10 pupils)
• Pupils grappling with the scientific implications of 'the Sun going out' in order to write creatively about what might happen (year 5 and 6) 
• Pupils and their parents sitting in a school hall and writing poetry on a Summer's evening (year 9).

All of these things and many more have taken place in the last year as part of the TEXT project. All of the pupils mentioned above have been encouraged and inspired to explore their ideas and feelings through creative writing, by professional writers working for the TEXT project.

Read some extracts from recent pupil work.

What schools say about TEXT

"This is the way Literacy should be taught. The kids were engaged and enthralled"
Year 6 teacher, Poole's Park school.

"I would like to keep you all here all the time. Fantastic"
Year 6 teacher, Grafton school.

"It's wicked, because it's our own book"
Year 5 boys at Charles Lamb Primary school.

"I learned how to put a book together and work together professionally"
Year 5 pupil Ecclesbourne Primary school.

"This project has produced a history book that I imagine children will cherish all their lives. It is a delight to look at."
Headteacher, Laycock Primary school.