Introducing Story Seeds: Springtime In The North Inner City
A collection of six stories by primary school students from the North Inner City.
In January 2021, Sgt Aoife Reilly of the Mountjoy Garda Community Engagement Unit approached Fighting Words with the idea of collaborating on a creative project for primary school students on the northside of Dublin. Fighting Words, co-founded by Roddy Doyle, offers free creative writing programmes to children and young people, all run by teams of volunteer mentors. Based in Russell Street, opposite Croke Park, Fighting Words now operates in 18 locations on the island of Ireland.
Following meetings with Fighting Words staff, the Story Seeds project was born: new stories to celebrate the areas where we all live, work and play. The idea was that the first school would write the first chapter of a story, the next class would write the second chapter and so on.
The six Story Seeds stories were written between March and May 2021 at online workshops with the participating schools and teams of volunteer mentors and illustrators from Fighting Words. The resulting book was published in June and copies were distributed to each of the 22 participating schools by Fighting Words and the Community Engagement Units from Mountjoy and Store Street. The students and the staff in all the schools were delighted to see their stories and all the authors' names in print.
A pdf version of the stories can be viewed here
We think you will agree that each story is full of action and fun starring a huge range of inventive characters in adventures from Croke Park to Dublin Zoo, from The Garden of Remembrance to Johnny Cullen’s Hill, from Griffith Park to the GPO and everywhere in between.
Congratulations to all the young writers for a fantastic achievement.