Creative writing competition for schools in Trafford

Working with Schools across Trafford in Greater Manchester, the Social Responsibility team in the School of Environment, Education and Development (SEED) have developed a creative writing competition to encourage children to have fun with their writing and learning during the pandemic.

The ‘Trafford 500 words’ competition seeks to engage children in Key Stage 2 (aged 7-11), asking them to write a story on a theme or subject of their choice to be submitted by Friday 19 March.

To help the pupils fire up their imaginations, SEED organised for Manchester Institute of Education PhD student and former teacher, Rebecca Grant to run a special online creative writing workshop in early February. More than 600 children from over 50 Schools joined in, developing their creative writing skills through a number of challenges such as writing the most boring story they could possibly think of and writing sentences without using the letter e.

Wendi Swan, teacher at Wellfield Primary School and key collaborator for the ‘Trafford 500 words’ initiative, said: “The enthusiasm that the workshop generated was phenomenal, it was great to everyone exercising their creativity and I can’t wait to hear how many submissions the competition has”.

Submissions will be judged by school teachers, guest writers and representatives of the University. The winner and runners up will be presented with their awards at a virtual ceremony in May, during which a selection of the stories will be read out and the winner’s story will be brought to life in a performance by a Manchester based drama group.

To find out more about the ‘Trafford 500 words’ project or any of the SEED Social Responsibility projects, please contact Social Responsibility Director jonny.huck@manchester.ac.uk.