Ryan Kenny-
In college, writing means essays. And essays mean deadlines, word counts, and desperate, coffee fuelled all-nighters. It means trying to sound like we know what we’re talking about, trying to get enough information across, to shoe-horn in enough quotes. One thing it almost never involves is story-telling. Which is a shame, because, however much it may feel like being part of a bad Failte Ireland campaign to admit it, Ireland has always been a nation of storytellers. Our celebrated greats, Joyce, Wilde, Beckett, Yeats, and all the others who tend to have things named after them, are, for all their fame and glory, not so different from the rest of us. Every day we all ask, and answer, the question “What’s the story?”
No more than fifteen minutes from Front Arch, the Fighting Words creative writing centre on Russell Street is helping to connect those who walk through its doors back to that culture of story-telling. Founded by renowned Irish author Roddy Doyle and former Director of Amnesty International Sean Love, and inspired by American author Dave Eggers’ 826 project, the centre has gone from strength to strength since opening its doors in January 2009. With over 20,000 satisfied students so far, and their primary and secondary school workshops fully booked for the year by the end of their first week taking bookings, they must be doing something right.
Although they provide a range of other evening, weekend, and mid-term workshops, covering everything from screenplays to song writing, the main focus of the centre is the creative writing sessions which take place each morning and afternoon, four days a week. Each morning a class of primary school children arrives in the bright, book-lined front office, before being taken through the ‘magic’ revolving bookcase to the centre itself.
Seated on the colourful beanbags spread across the floor, they are told by the volunteer leading the class that they will be spending the morning writing a story, and that, if it is very good, it might just be published by the mysterious and cantankerous editor whose voice barks out at them from behind another bookcase. The one condition: it must be entirely original.
The first part of the morning is spent collaboratively, creating the building blocks of the story. By brainstorming and voting on ideas for a main character, a best friend, a greatest wish, and a greatest fear, initial hesitance is quickly overrun by enthusiasm, and soon ideas and fragments of stories, “Captain Wartburger and the Magic Lotion”, “The Legend of Noel The Squirrel”, “he wants to own the world’s biggest ball of string” are flying across the room. Once the beginning of the story has taken shape, the second half of the morning is spent in writing their own endings to the story, and at the end of the two hour period, each student is presented with a printed copy of their story, complete with illustrations and their photograph on the back.
The afternoon session with secondary school students runs along similar lines, but with most of the tricks used to get the younger children involved (the revolving door, the editor’s voice) stripped away. Instead, the opening hour often begins with two volunteers given a scenario, for example two friends in the middle of a misunderstanding about a concert ticket, and are asked to act it out, with their dialogue then forming the basis for the beginning of the story.
The centre is operated almost entirely on a voluntary basis. A permanent staff of four coordinates all the activities and the volunteers, but volunteers run almost all of the classes. Thanks in part to the involvement of one of Ireland’s leading writers, some of these volunteers include people like John Banville, Eoin Colfer, Christy Moore, and Paul Durcan, to name but a few, who have all run workshops in their particular fields. But the day to day operation of the centre, and its ability to achieve its mission of “providing somewhere that encourages creative writing in all its forms, everyone is welcome, and everything is free”, depends on ordinary volunteers, many of whom are students, escaping for a few hours from the endless cycle of word-count focused, deadline driven, storyless, essay writing.
For details about the centre or how to get involved see www.fightingwords.ie or email [email protected].
