About

First Story Students at
Cranford Community College

First Story supports and inspires creativity, literacy and talent in UK schools and their communities.

We arrange and pay for acclaimed authors to run creative writing workshops for students in challenging secondary schools across the country. Each author leads weekly after-school creative-writing workshops for up to sixteen students.

At the end of the workshops, First Story publishes a professionally produced anthology for each school, and the schools host book-launch events at which the students read their stories aloud to friends, families and teachers.

In addition, we encourage students to continue their publications independently of First Story and provide resources to help students and teachers build ‘writing schools’.

We currently have twenty-six residencies under way at schools in London, Oxford and Nottingham.

This has been an absolutely wonderful chance for our students. 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. It has enabled them to discover themselves and develop this incredible talent. I am so proud of them and really grateful to be involved in First Story.

Dillena Basra, Head of English, Quintin Kynaston School.

First Story Book Launch

Our Story

Former teacher Katie Waldegrave and the writer William Fiennes met in the autumn of 2007 and soon fell into a conversation about Fiennes’s work as Writer-in-Residence at the fee-paying American School in London. Fiennes has said about his experiences at ASL:

You don’t expect to turn out best-selling authors every week. You hope to help your students express themselves in their own authentic voices, to value their experiences and memories, to be alive to the world around them, to notice more, to treasure the variousness of people and things. You hope to instil the most constructive sort of self-belief. For teenagers especially, these are important gifts… The shyest students grow in confidence when the whole group falls silent to listen to them read. It’s as if they’ve at last found a space in which they can be heard.

Of course, not every school can afford to have a writer-in-residence. William and Katie started First Story in the hope of bringing such an opportunity to state schools around the country.

By September 2008, eight writers ― Aminatta Forna, Helen Simpson, Frances Wilson, Romesh Gunesekera, Peter Hobbs, Louisa Young, Raffaella Barker and William Fiennes ― were conducting weekly workshops in eight different schools across London, from Hounslow to Finchley, White City to Bermondsey.

By the end of the summer term, the students had completed two terms of workshops, chosen the work they wanted to publish in their anthology, argued about the title and cover design, and planned a reading and book launch.

Since 2008 First Story has continued to grow. In 2009 First Story launched three residencies in Oxford and in 2010 the Duchess of Cornwall launched First Story in the East Midlands with four residencies. In 2011 the Duchess became Patron of First Story.

Over the years, there have been several outstanding examples of students extending their experiences after the initial year; for example, Larkmead School in Abingdon organised a school-wide literary festival as their launch event and had students at all levels working on creative writing. Likewise, students at Cranford Community College, Highgate Wood School and Cheney School have helped lead workshops for younger students in their communities. The pilot group also founded a literary society at their school, organising guest speakers: the authors Mark Haddon and Charlie Cumming and the film director Garth Jennings.

Six students have read their stories at the Oxford Literary Festival,  introduced by Philip Pullman; two were published on Granta’s website. Students have won the Wicked Young Writers Award and the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award.

First Story has arranged for students to take part in the annual First Story summer residential and students have undertaken prestigious work-experience placements in the media and publishing. In September 2011 First Story held the inaugural First Story Festival at Broughton Castle in Oxfordshire for 500 budding young authors, where they joined twenty established writers such as Mark Haddon, Philip Pullman, Michael Morpurg, Meg Rosoff and Jackie Kay for a day of writing workshops and inspiring talks.

First Story is helping young people to find their voice and know that their voice has value.

First Story is a very exciting idea. Having been a teacher myself, I know how writing – real writing, not the artificial exercises produced for tests and examinations – can liberate and strengthen young people’s sense of themselves as almost nothing else can.

Philip Pullman, author of His Dark Materials.

Charitable Objectives

First Story’s charitable objectives (as set out in its Memorandum of Association and approved by the Charity Commission) are:

(1) to advance the education of young students in challenging UK secondary schools by providing and assisting in the provision of facilities not required to be provided by the local education authority for education in creative writing;

(2) to advance in life and help young students in challenging UK secondary schools through the provision of support, opportunities and activities which foster their creativity, literacy and talent to build self-confidence, skills and aspiration so they may grow to full maturity as individuals and members of society; and

(3) to promote the arts and, in particular, literature, poetry and creative writing by: (a) inviting, commissioning and maintaining services of British writers whether such services require the payment of fees by the charity or otherwise; and (b) encouraging and assisting in promoting, advancing and publishing the works of British writers.

“First Story”  is a business name of First Story Limited, a private company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales, whose company number is 06487410 and registered office is 4 More London Riverside . First Story Limited is a registered UK charity, number 1122939.