Writing changes children’s lives

I’ve been pretty rubbish with literary festivals this year, thanks to a combination of a wedding, no money and erratic organisational skills. I didn’t squat in a wood listening to under-tens performance poetry at Bestival; nor hear Kazuo Ishiguro hold forth at Oxford; nor belly laugh with David Sedaris at Edinburgh. I’m not even making it to Cheltenham this month, although it is starting to rival Hay as the must-go big-name book bacchanal.

But I did make it to one: the first First Story Festival, held a couple of weeks ago at Broughton Castle in Oxfordshire. It was as far from self-satisfied-middle-class-echo-chamber-with-overpriced-organic-icecream as you could get, and frankly, I suspect it was the best.

At First Story, two genial evenings of author talks and Q&As – from Michael Morpurgo and David Nicholls, no less – sandwiched an admirably ambitious day where 500 school children got “an infusion of poetry and prose workshops, readings and talks from some of Britain’s best published writers and performers”, all focused on getting them to write: there and then, themselves.

In the wake of the riots, during which “the disenfranchised yoof” left bookshops largely untouched, there has been much talk about the impact of the UK’s declining literacy on our society. There are several initiatives around at the moment aimed at encouraging children to read, from the Evening Standard’s celeb-fuelled Get London Reading to the industry-backed Just Read Campaign. But there are very few charities explicitly focused on getting kids to write: a simple act so bold, so empowering, so self-assertive that it really can change lives.

First Story is one of them. Founded in 2009 by author William Fiennes and teacher Katie Waldegrove, First Story arranges and pays for professional authors to work as ‘writers-in-residence’ in ‘challenging’ secondary schools – those with at least 30% of students eligible for free school meals, and/or less than 25% getting five A-C grades at GCSE. The writers lead weekly after-school creative-writing workshops that culminate in a series of readings by the pupils and the creation of proper bound anthologies of the their work to sell. As of this month, they have 26 residencies under way at schools in London, Oxford and Nottingham.

The success of the project is best borne out by the testimonials of teachers and pupils alike. “This has been an absolutely wonderful chance for our students, “ says Dillena Basra, Head of English at Quintin Kynaston School. “They are on free school meals, live in tough areas and have really challenging lives. It has been a chance for them to develop a love of language, of writing, to enjoy reading and the process of expressing themselves in a way that is so safe and so freeing.” Similarly, Kevin Prunty from Cranford Community College explains that “I witnessed a real sense of [the students’] inner growth, pride and achievement. The Cranford writers created positive role models and a sense that writing can be safe”.

Using writing to feel ‘safe’ is obviously an important theme here. And although I had a very lucky childhood with none of the challenges faced by the First Story pupils, I can absolutely relate to its truth.

Books were, unsurprisingly, as central to my upbringing as fig rolls and three-hour tantrums. My mum spent hours reading to me both in her womb and out, and ours was a house full of eclectic things to read from AA Milne to Zoé Oldenbourg. Every so often I will browse through some of the endless number of stories I wrote I was young. Most of them involved ponies, pirates and noblewomen disguised as boys (ouch), but all of them are suffused with an unselfconscious pleasure and unbridled energy that reflects how I saw writing: as essential as climbing trees, making paper people or dressing up as boys. From my five-year-old self’s saga of a bear (he escaped, he got lost in a forest, he went back to the zoo; William Kotzwinkle would be proud) to my thirteen-year-old self’s tale of a Roman soldier pursuing vengeance in ancient Bath (still probably the best thing I’ve written to date), my sense of entitlement to be a writer was unquestioned.

But this was partly because I was a highly sensitive, shy and anxious child. I always seemed to be getting things wrong and getting into trouble. The way the world worked seemed very different to the way I did. When I was writing I felt ‘safe’ – not because it was something dull or cosy, but because it allowed me to lose myself in delicious and dangerous scenarios without ever having to feel afraid or ashamed. For kids only used to getting that release by diving into those scenarios in real life, writing gives them a very practical alternative; a positive channel for all that youthful energy and frustrated ambition. Anyone who has felt that wonderful, drained post-writing zen will know that it can be as physically cathartic as a knife fight.

Every child deserves the right to feel that words are their safe playground – and their ever-reliable playmate. So although I may not have caught Alan Hollinghurst at Latitude or Howard Jacobson at Soho, I really don’t care. It’s time First Story got a good deal more attention; and that we re-positioned writing as not the privileged preserve of the few, but the birthright of us all.