Tales to Scale: Scaling Education in DEIS Schools

What Is Tales to Scale: Scaling Education?

Between 2023 to 2025, Tales to Scale: Scaling Education focused on the creative engagement between Fighting Words and DEIS (Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools) primary and secondary schools across Ireland. Through creative workshops and projects, we offered a way to invite young people to tell their stories in positive spaces.

Although this project has come to an end, our journey still continues…

Benefits Inside and Outside the Classroom

Our creative workshops are not only fun and interactive, they also support different skills useful for inside and outside the classroom! Team work, presentation, writing, confidence-building, independent creation.

What can we offer your class?

• We will work with you to determine the workshop or project to suit your class.

• Our workshops run from 90 minutes to two hours per session, depending on the type of workshop and/or project. 

• Our workshops are delivered by a team of Fighting Words staff and volunteer mentors who are vetted and trained, each spreading positive encouragement! 

• All creative pieces are published in Tales to Scales to celebrate young creators with the world!

Tales to Scale: Primary Schools

Our primary workshops are in two parts: group work and individual writing time. The first part of the workshop focuses on the group creating the beginning of a story together. A facilitator works with the class to develop characters, incorporating the many ideas that pop up around the room into the plot.  

The second part of the workshop allows each student to explore individual creation. Armed with paper, pencils and colours, students can either finish the group story or create something new – they can draw, write, sing - it’s completely up to them!

At the very end, there will be time to share work if the students wish, followed by positive feedback from the volunteer mentors.

After we say goodbye to the wonderful writers (your students), teachers are welcome to adopt our structures in the classroom and continue to encourage creativity.

Tales to Scale: Secondary Schools

Our secondary school Prose workshops are split in two parts: group work and individual writing time. The first part of the workshop focuses on the group creating the beginning of a story together. The facilitator works with the group to create characters, develop dialogue between them and then shape that dialogue into a story.

The second part of the workshops invites each student to work individually. They can continue the group creation, or take the time to explore their own ideas. There is room to try other writing styles (e.g. poetry, playwriting, scriptwriting, lyrics, sports commentary, diaries, etc.)

After we say goodbye to the writers (your students), teachers are welcome to adopt our structures in the classroom and continue to encourage creativity.

Our Team

Our workshops are run by teams of volunteer writing mentors, supervised by Fighting Words staff using our fun and interactive formats. Specialist workshops are delivered by experienced practitioners in a variety of fields, such as playwriting, graphic fiction, short stories and more.

All programming is focused on supporting children and young people to tell their own stories in their own voice and at their own pace. There is never a focus on spelling or grammar. The content is decided by the participants, with advice and guidance from the Fighting Words team.

Trained and Vetted Mentors

At Fighting Words, the safety of young people comes first. 

Our staff and all our volunteer mentors are subject to Garda vetting, interviews and reference checks. They are also required to attend training sessions in our workshop formats and child protection. 

While our mentors come from all walks of life, all of them are motivated by a love of working with children and young people in a creative environment and fostering creativity.

Booking a Workshop

Contact Scaling Education Officer Pierina Campbell  to express interest in participating in our Tales to Scale workshops and projects. Pierina will put you in contact with a Fighting Words centre closest to you, or will work with you where the first option is not viable.

We encourage groups to visit us in one of our Fighting Words centres as much as possible. In the case where this is not possible, workshops can be scheduled to take place in your local library/arts centre, in your school, or online.

NB: Please provide your School Roll Number in your correspondence.

The Tales to Scale Strategy - Creative Engagement in DEIS Schools

The Scaling Education Project works towards scaling and influencing educational disadvantage in Ireland. Fighting Words will focus on delivering creative engagement in DEIS schools through Scaling Education: Tales to Scale with the aim to have creative activities in all DEIS schools in the country within three years.

Fighting Words delivers a transformative approach to address educational disadvantage. It is a simple but effective quest, to provide creative writing and creative learning opportunities for children and young people experiencing disadvantage, discrimination, and exclusion.

We know through experience and evidence that creativity is fundamental to the full development of the child, and it enables them to address and respond to the educational challenges and societal barriers they face.

Click on the link below to explore the Tales to Scale Strategy.

Fighting Words’ Workshop Provision to DEIS Schools: A Review of 2022-2025

Author: Eemer Eivers
Date: February 2026

Over the past three years, Fighting Words has delivered a dedicated initiative focused on engaging with DEIS schools across Ireland. This work has been central to our mission ensuring that young people experiencing educational disadvantage have meaningful access to creative opportunities. We are proud of the relationships built, the voices nurtured, and the commitment shown by the schools, teachers, young people, and other organisations who partnered with us throughout this initiative. 

We warmly welcome the publication of the external evaluation conducted by Rethink Ireland and Eemer Eivers, and we extend our sincere thanks for the care brought to this important piece of work. The evaluation highlights the significant progress made over the past three years and offers important and useful findings that will inform our work into the future. As an organisation, we remain strategically committed to continuing and deepening our focus on educational disadvantage - a path to accessible creative opportunities for all young people.

Is One Of Your Students a Keen Writer? Tell Them About Write Club!

In our experience, most classes have at least one or two students who love to write. We encourage them to sign up to Write Club, which runs both online and in-person. 

Young people from 13-18 meet on Zoom and/or at our Dublin centre to pursue their own writing/creative projects, and to meet like-minded people. It is free of charge with regular sessions and publishing opportunities.

More Information & Links

• Write Club - the free in-person and online club for writers in secondary school
• Transition Year Placements - Fighting Words offers placements to students in Transition Year in Dublin and Wicklow. Click here to find out more.
• Educator Resources - Here you will find Fighting Words workshop plans, handbooks for specific genres, worksheets, and more!
• CPD for Teachers - Here you will learn more about continuous professional development for teachers and educators.