London Voice Connect at UCL East

By Professor Teresa Cremin, the Open University

What a fascinating morning I spent yesterday at First Story’s London Voice Connect! Mainly KS3 students attended from five London schools who’ve been part of the 16 week extracurricular writing sessions led by First Story in their schools this year. Funded by the The Mercers’ Company , this is nested within their four year Literacy Special Initiative on reading and writing for pleasure.

The OU team are exploring the role of talk in volitional reading and writing and indeed the spoken word was central to the day. This was evident not just in the excited conversations before Yomi Sode began, but in the writing and performance workshops too.

I was lucky to work with Adam Z Robinson and students from Trinity Academy and Platanos College and what talented young writers they were! Adam stressed that everyone has a unique voice and after some supportive interactions we all got writing – suddenly you could have heard a pin drop!

He offered highly affirmative and specific feedback to all those who shared extracts of their writing publicly -or just with him -and interestingly used modal verbs throughout, consistently retaining the young writers’ ownership of their own work – and making clear the authorial decision making process was theirs.

The sharing across the room was respectfully handled and Adam rather wonderfully described this as ‘giving their writing its first outing’ and ‘the beating heart of the workshop’. Certainly the writing I heard was powerful and whilst not yet polished was packed with personal voice and verve.

I look forward to learning more as we journey alongside the 7 secondary and 6 primary organisations in this cutting edge Literacy Special Initiative. We need to know more about the role talk plays in motivating and supporting young readers and writers and now we have the chance to explore this.

As region-specific provision, our Connect events encourage participants to connect with each other as a community of young writers, as well as strengthening connections to local universities and cultural institutions where events take place.

London Voice is generously funded by the St Paul’s Schools Foundation and supported by The Mercers’ Company. London Voice has been developed in conversation with the Open University.