Fighting Words Northern Ireland has launched ‘New Worlds’, an anthology of creative writing from pupils at four Belfast primary schools. Between January and March 2022, over 100 young writers from P6 and P7 classes at Scoil an Droichid, Victoria Park Primary School, Fane Street Primary School and Holy Family Primary School attended workshops and collaborated over Zoom to create and produce story endings for the anthology which is now online.
Despite the challenges of the Covid pandemic, Fighting Words NI brought together four different schools from four differing parts of Belfast to explore creative writing and expression. Together, these young writers travelled in their imaginations to explore ‘new worlds’ which they have never been to before, offering help to each other through exchanging stories and letters. The results are the amazing stories contained in this anthology.
In a specially written foreword for ‘New Worlds’, Lord Mayor of Belfast, Councillor Kate Nicholl said:
“The young people who have written the stories in this anthology have developed the brightest of ideas, have imagined entirely new communities and have sought to help, repair and make contact with places they have never seen.
“We are thrilled to read their stories about the spirit of community amidst great imagined new worlds. And I hope that perhaps we’ll find some inspiration in these pages as we work together to make Belfast an even kinder, more equal and more welcoming city.”
Project Manager at Fighting Words NI, Mícheál McCann said:
“This project was an absolute joy to manage and even though the pupils weren’t able to meet in person due to Covid restrictions, they communicated so well over Zoom and even sent each other messages of support and encouragement during the writing process.
“They were delighted to receive a special video message from the Lord Mayor of Belfast and we recorded some of our staff and volunteers reading story excerpts from ‘New Worlds’ which was a little extra recognition for their hard work.”
New Worlds was funded by the Northern Ireland Executive’s Central Good Relations Fund and Belfast City Council. Fighting Words NI, based in East Belfast, provides year-round free creative writing opportunities for children and young people aged 6-18 through its schools’ story making workshops, after-school Write Clubs and community engagement programme.
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