Since August, myself and a wonderful team of volunteers (shoutout to Rosie, Zadie, and Flo) had the opportunity to design an eight-week digital creative writing course with SVC for the beneficiaries alongside Innovate Trust. The course structure was as follows:
Session 1: Introductions and Vocabulary activities
Session 2: Prose - Sensory Descriptions
Session 3: Prose - Narrative Structure
Session 4: Poetry - Acrostics + Rhyme
Session 5: Poetry - Free Verse
Session 6: Screen Writing - Genre + Character
Session 7: Screen Writing - SFX + Character Types + Script Structures
Session 8: Christmas Themed recap/ goodbyes
The aim of our course was to create a small, informal, digital social space by providing tools for creative expression. This meant that our small group of five beneficiaries were able to take away what they wanted from the course, whether that be the social/communication side or the creative/literacy aspects (or both!). We ended up with an eclectic group of individuals who all brought their own special outlooks on the world and imaginations to our sessions.
Another aspect of the course we encouraged was ‘performance’. As daunting as this sounds, it was mainly a way for us to share writing with one another through verbal communication. In some sessions we would collaborate on a piece of writing and our beneficiaries would read it aloud for us. In later sessions confidence was growing, both for the beneficiaries and for us volunteers, and some beneficiaries began reading their own writing to the group. I’m sure I speak for all the volunteers when I say that the writing we heard was beautiful, uplifting and so imaginative!
I am so grateful to have been the Lead Volunteer on this project and so thankful for all the volunteers for their dedication and the beneficiaries for their enthusiasm! I’d also like to give thanks to SVC and Innovate Trust for supporting us as we enter this new digital terrain.
If you’d like to know what projects we’re currently running to help the community or want to get involved with SVC, check out our list of projects here: https://www.svcymru.org/projects
