Fighting Words Coleraine

FIGHTING WORDS in COLERAINE

Following on from a successful pilot project last year – the Riverside is excited to be able to offer more FREE creative writing workshops for school groups, delivered by Fighting Words Belfast.

At a Fighting Words workshop, the group set out on a story-making journey with trained volunteer mentors, working at first collaboratively and then individually to create brand-new tales. All participants leave as published writers with their own storybook.

Fighting Words Belfast is a sister organisation of Fighting Words (Dublin), inspired by 826 Valencia in San Francisco and part of a growing network of creative writing centres around the world. Its patrons are the acclaimed writers Glenn Patterson, Lucy Caldwell, Paul Muldoon, Roddy Doyle, Nick Hornby, and Dave Eggers. The project’s aim is, in Glenn Patterson's words, to ‘empower children and young people to become the authors of their own lives’.   All Fighting Words workshops take place outside a classroom setting, helping to ‘de-school’ the creative writing experience. Fighting Words exists to respect and amplify the voices and imaginations of all our young people, and works tirelessly to empower them through the art of story-telling.

Writing mentors needed at Riverside 

Fighting Words workshops are powered by volunteer mentors. No writing or teaching background is necessary to mentor - just an interest in stories and curiosity about children's ideas. Over 300 Fighting Words volunteers have been trained in NI; people 18+ from all walks of life find mentoring to be an uplifting, valuable experience. Training sessions for anyone who would like to be involved and find out more are taking place at the Riverside on:

• Monday 14^th October – (10 a.m. - 12 p.m.)
• Tuesday 22nd October – (10 a.m. - 12 p.m.)

Schools workshops in November

A limited number of schools workshops will be available in November 2019. Please let us know if your school or class would like to avail of these amazing, free creative sessions, or if you'd like to see them happening at your child's school. In the future, we want to see a dedicated Fighting Words centre at Riverside for Coleraine and surrounding schools. We can't reach everyone at once, but taking note of local interest in the project will help us build it going forward.

Please email the Theatre Manager, Roseanne (r.sturgeon@ulster.ac.uk) for more information on mentoring, to sign up for a volunteer training, or to register interest in schools workshops.