Story Seeds

The Story Seeds project supports young people to write their own story with the aim of enabling them to begin to understand their own life story - their personal, circumstantial and emotional story and their place- geographical, social, imaginative.

Creativity Growing All Over Ireland!

The Story Seeds project is aimed at not only introducing children and young people to creative writing but also to strengthen their positive sense of themselves and to allow them to re-imagine the negatives in their lives and transform their sense of place and possibility.

"I loved reading the work the Story Seeds project produced in Dublin's north inner city, and I'm really looking forward to what gets written by children and young people in other parts of the country when they start making Story Seeds their own" - Roddy Doyle

The Seeds of Story Seeds

The Story Seeds project started taking shape in January 2021, when 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.

The first 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.

With the support of the Arts Council, the Irish Youth Foundation and Dublin North East Inner City, the stories were published in June 2021 and distributed to participating schools.

Story Seeds - Still Growing

In July 2021, Ministers Catherine Martin TD and Roderic O'Gorman TD  approved €250,000 to extend the impact of the Fighting Words Story Seeds programme to 14,000 children and young people.

This additional €250,000 will be provided by the Creative Ireland Programme of the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media and the What Works initiative, supported by the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth and funded under Dormant Accounts; to extend the Story Seeds programme of creative writing activity.

This new funding has enabled Fighting Words to greatly expand the programme and bring the Story Seeds project to 14,000 children and young people in 120 primary schools, 70 secondary schools and 30 youth and additional needs groups in Dublin West, Dublin South inner city, Cork City, Limerick City, Bray/Wicklow and Drogheda.

Through Story Seeds, Fighting Words has connected with organisations working in the areas of disadvantage, social marginalisation, mental health, disability, ethnic minorities and refugees/migrants. We have brought together groups to work with facilitators to create new stories, plays, poems and more.

Keep watching this space to watch us grow!