FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

Harry Potter’ or ‘How To Train Your Dragon?’
What do you love to read?
What do you want to be able to write?

Workshops, and courses, as well as individual tutoring via Skype, for young people. Exam preparation, or just for the love of it…

Inside every young person are the wild words, the stories, trying to get out.

Telling and writing stories is a fundamental way through which young bodies and minds process emotional experience, discharge energy from the nervous system, gain perspective, communicate and connect.

I work in a holistic and organic way. I follow their passion, curiosity and playfulness. They are encouraged to trust their innate ability, to connect with their ‘natural storyteller’. Together we find the stories that they most want to tell, and a form through which to convey them. We cultivate a life-long love of words, both fiction, and non-fiction.

The process of writing a story, poem or essay is broken down into bite-size pieces. Participants learn when to let go into the flow of writing, and when to bring in the ‘editing’ mind. They come to understand the process of practising techniques, until they can be utilised unconsciously.

Writing skills include taught include:

Throughout the process, we talk of learning to write and tell stories well, as ‘tracking the Wild Words’ much as you would tracking a tiger in a wood.

The young people are building a relationship with a part of themselves that is expressive, alive and powerful, but which needs to be channelled, and gently focused, to get the best from it.

Whenever possible at Wild Words workshops we do the writing experiments (as I like to call the exercises) outside, in nature. Through this, participants learn that nature can put them in touch with qualities that inform their writing, including a breadth of sensory, physical, and emotional experience.

They are given all the key skills to enable them to write well, as well as the confidence to pursue their own projects. Simultaneously, they also learn also important life skills. These include: confidence in their own abilities, a way of engaging with the world that facilitates enjoyment and curiosity, the ability to make fearless, considered choices in life, and the tools to take responsibility for those choices.

Recent Wild Words children’s courses have included a week-long course at Uppingham Summer School, and a day workshop at Lavenham Literary Festival.

Teaching can be geared to individual needs, school learning criteria, and all key stages.

Do get in touch at bridgetholding@wildwords.org if you’d like to invite Bridget to come and work with a group of young people.

What they say

“Bridget was friendly and welcoming. She gave us help on structure, ideas, etc. but also let us be free on what we wanted to write about.”
Joe, aged 13

“She was very informative and helped a lot with the detail in my story.”
Georgia, aged 11

“It was a fun experience that helped to broaden my horizons and try out new styles of writing.”
Jamie, aged 12