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Celebrating the 100th birthday of Roald Dahl

Tuesday, 13 September, 2016

This week will mark the hundredth birthday of beloved children’s author and storyteller Roald Dahl. To celebrate Bath Spa University is urging local schools to get involved in a unique creative writing project.

The University is searching for 100 schools to pioneer a new writing programme called Paper Nations. The project is led by Bath Spa University in partnership with Bath Festivals and the National Association of Writers in Education. Professional writers will work with teachers to develop high quality creative writing experiences for children age 8 -14.

The project has received support from Arts Council England through a strategic fund that aims build a regular, consistent and high quality creative writing offer in schools across England.

Creative Director of the Project Bambo Soyinka said: “For the past decade, Roald Dahl’s birthday has been recognised with a worldwide celebration, ‘Roald Dahl Day’. This year, on what would have been Roald Dahl’s hundredth birthday, the celebrations promise to be bigger and more dahlicious than ever before. It seems fitting to launch our search for schools in celebration of this inspirational and much-loved author.

“We are searching for one hundred schools prepared to take the Paper Nations challenge and get involved. Creative writing should be part of every child’s education as it develops imaginative thought, language and literary skills. Paper Nations will introduce school pupils to the joys of writing and will enable young people to learn alongside professional writers.”

“To sign up your school please visit our website papernations.org and fill in the application form.”

As part of the project and in tribute to Dahl and other writers who’ve inspired young people to pick up their pens, Paper Nations is introducing ‘Dare to Write’ which is a series of creative writing prompts, challenges, resources and opportunities for children and young people. Parents, teachers and other grown-ups are encouraged to take part too.

Each week Paper Nations will be sharing ideas of fun, interactive creative writing activities on their blog as well as on the Twitter and Facebook pages.

Each Dare to Write ‘dare’ can be adapted for young writers of all ages, literacy levels and backgrounds, and we’d love to see what they come up with. Share their stories with us via Twitter or Facebook using the #DaretoWrite hashtag and they might even end up featured on our website and social channels.

A series of specialised workshops for teachers and creative writers will run alongside the schools programme, supporting and enriching their professional development and training them in different approached to teaching creative writing to engage a range of pupils across a variety of schools.

To find out more about Paper Nations visit www.papernations.org.uk