Danny completed the First Story Young Writers Programme at Nottingham Academy in 2018. In 2021, he suffered a traumatic brain injury and used his writing skills to help in his recovery. In 2024, he combined these skills with his experience as a young carer to lead a Nottingham Poetry Festival featured project, working with young carers to write, perform and publish their own stories.
I was into making music when I was a teenager and spent a lot of my time doing that. I was dyslexic so I struggled to read, but I joined the school book group anyway because I liked the people who went. Someone in that group suggested I joined First Story but I didn’t fancy it at first, then when my English teacher suggested it as well I decided to give it a try. That was back in 2017. It was my first experience of creative writing, and it was an interesting break from making music.
I was a young carer at the time, looking after my dad, so the First Story workshops reminded me of how I could be relaxed and creative, allowing me to be weird and quirky when I wanted to be. My first piece was about being a carer and Dad’s condition, which gave me a way to express my own experiences, but Jim Hall, our Writer-in-Residence, helped me realise that I don’t always have to speak about my caring identity. I liked how everyone would write about what mattered to them – people or experiences that meant a lot, epic fantasies, even KFC. I loved that dynamic in our sessions.
My musical performances had given me confidence to stand up in public and the ability to articulate myself well, so I ended up hosting the launch event for our anthology. I hadn’t previously had any experience of hosting or performing on my own without my fellow musicians around me, so I’d definitely say it was a development opportunity First Story gave me. I’ve used the skills I learned in interviews, for sixth form colleges at the time, and since then too.
Four years ago, when I was 17, I had a traumatic brain injury, which took a lot of time to recover from. I was focusing more on music than writing before that happened, but writing really came into its own for me then alongside the music. The injury gave me super-sensitive hearing, and it was through writing about it that I started to accept how difficult that was for me. I tried to use all of my senses in all my creative activities, and writing particularly allowed me to do that and helped with recovering my memory and speech.
Poetry, music, art, they’re not separate things to me. They’re just different creative mediums for expressing emotion. Emotion is what links them all together.
This year, Jim Hall is supporting me to lead on one of Nottingham Poetry Festival’s featured projects. It is a series of creative writing workshops in person and online for young carers, with opportunities to perform at the Festival, and throughout the year at events in and around Nottingham. We’ll also help the young writers create their own anthology of their work. It’s important to me that they have complete ownership of that, and the performances that they put on.
In my day job now, I’m a student nurse. I want to help people in everything I do, and influence the world for the better, so I’m hoping to work in nursing research and find solutions to real problems affecting patients with brain injuries. Creative writing and music are just a part of that. They help me release my own emotions and ground me at the same time, and they allow me to help others to do the same.
I’ve come to the realisation that all I need to do is dream about what I want to do, and that’s where I can take it. That’s what I want for the young writers I’m working with, to let them know that all they have to do is dream about it and it can become reality.
