A key strand of First Story’s organisational strategy is to reach and benefit more of the most underserved young people by increasing access to our Young Writers Programme for students in Alternative Provision (AP) schools. We are grateful for the support of The Portal Trust and The Blue Thread for letting us explore how we adapt our flagship Young Writers Programme in these settings.
Many AP professionals have been supportive of our aims and we are fortunate that the Executive Head of Haringey Learning Partnership (a network of AP schools in North London), Gerry Robinson, sits on our board of trustees. Gerry was recently interviewed for Huh AP: curriculum conversations with alternative provision leaders by Mary Myatt, John Tomsett (John Catt, 2024) a book on AP provision, and mentions the benefits of First Story:
We work with organisations like First Story, where our students complete the Young Writers Programme, which sees them working with a published author over 16 weeks and become published authors themselves by the end of the course. The publication of their work is marked by a book launch, a big celebration event to which we invite the young people’s families and their previous schools to hear the share their work…Opportunities are about changing the perception of our young people – how other people outside of the organisation see them – but also changing the young people’s perception of themselves.
The Huh project is founded on conversations with colleagues doing great work across the education sector. In AP Huh, Mary Myatt and John Tomsett discuss curriculum provision for pupils attending alternative provision with some of the leading experts in the field.
AP schools interested in joining the First Story Young Writers Programme should complete our Expression of Interest form.
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