Brighton, WriteOn, TriteCon…
Week 18 of 2024 saw Optimism and Creativity take on Outrage and Apathy…
To see how Sam Pepys spent this week 364 years ago, follow this link.
I was feeling good at the start of this week. In my day job as education director for a major schools and events service provider, I’d earned my employer a fair whack of revenue for the month ahead, and was looking forward to spending the last couple of days catching up on writing deadlines, running writing workshops, and attending writing conferences.
To end it all, a community litter pick. What could be better for a writer who loves nature but also needs to pay rent?
It was just before 6am on Thursday when my plans spiralled. The Boss sent me a message asking for urgent help preventing a multi-£10k project in Brighton from coming apart at the seams. The project was one of those where our events team had been engaged at the recommendation of a content creator – a recommendation that had talked us up maybe a little more than we would’ve done ourselves…
Consequently a fair few expectations weren’t being met, a lot of expense was going into trying to meet them, and many tempers were fraying. There was a suggestion that our company wouldn’t be paid (though that turned out to be mainly all in the Boss’ head), and so our Boss had done what any self-respecting Boss would do:
Delegate the stress to someone else (in this case, me), then go recharge his batteries with some family time.
I know very little of the events side of our company, and had even less knowledge of the history to this particular contract. But I had till midday to try and sort the situation, not least because I had non-stop meetings to attend from then till 9pm.
So it was that my first three hours of Thursday were spent learning instead of writing, consoling instead of creating, and appeasing others instead of conquering my own ‘to do’ list.
I must’ve done something right, ‘coz by the time I was going into the first of those meetings, I’d ensured the right people would be arriving in Brighton to do the right jobs, and a signed document had arrived in my inbox confirming the client’s commitment to pay.
Phew! Though it was at the sacrifice of some major deadlines…
It was pure serendipity, then, that I was booked to deliver a workshop on ‘Writing for Theatrical Storytelling’ with Cambridge WriteOn that evening. This was a burst of creativity and joyous community in the middle of a week that had otherwise turned unexpectedly corporate. Just before heading off to bed after, the workshop organiser forwarded a bite of feedback she’d received via WhatsApp:
“Wasn’t that brilliant? And what a great guy!”
I slept well that night.
Which was useful, ‘coz the next day brought some follow-up work around the Brighton situation. Along with various other meetings, it became increasingly obvious that I wouldn’t be doing much writing of my own this week…
Still, I was due to be a writer on foot at the UKLA and NEU Primary Literacy Conference on Saturday. I’d been looking forward to this, having only recently joined the UK Literacy Association – a membership that was long overdue, given my line of work. But I’d actually only learned of their existence recently, when out promoting All the Better to Read You With.
By timely coincidence, their May ’24 conference was entitled “Reading for Pleasure” – everything I’ve been writing about and providing training on for the last couple of years. Hmm… Maybe that was an untimely coincidence: had I discovered the Association earlier, maybe I’d’ve been a speaker?
So you can imagine my disappointment when I turned up early to discover that the facilitator of their key RfP workshop, Jon Biddle, had cancelled due to ill health. The Educate columnist’s workshops were at full capacity owing to his offer to share the remarkable way in which he rebuilt his school around RfP, and I’d been looking forward to trading ideas with him.
What’s more, this was a Reading for Pleasure conference… and that was 50% of the Reading for Pleasure workshops! The other had also been at full capacity, but I hadn’t got into that one. Those who’d been in Biddle’s workshops were being offered a reading comprehension workshop instead. The remaining eleven workshops barely touched RfP at all.
But, hold on… There I was, a Reading for Pleasure specialist, who’d just turned up at an event where the main RfP specialist had cancelled last-minute… Could I…?
Well, I offered. But former UKLA president David Reedy had already spent considerable time preparing his comprehension workshop, so my offer was gratefully received but respectfully declined. They seemed keen to hear from me for a future event, though…
I’ll use my Education newsletter to share some of the insights I picked up during the day. I’ll use this space to share the pervasive pessimism I picked up – some of which was absurdly hypocritical.
In one workshop, a teacher interrupted the facilitator’s recommendations for effective strategies, pointing out that a lot of her suggestions wouldn’t get implemented in her (the Interruptor’s) school because, “the curriculum is set, so we don’t have that flexibility.”
I raised my hand to offer some ways she could easily adapt her current lessons to gain the learner engagement we were talking about, much to the gratitude of the facilitator and several other participants.
The Interruptor, though, didn’t look at all convinced. She did quieten – for a bit. But the next time she had something to say, she added a revelation: “I’m the Literacy SLT.”
$:-0 She was the one setting the curriculum for her school!
That’s why it didn’t shock me too much when, later, I caught her returning to the hall she’d been absent from for a whole 90min and getting upset about an accessibility chair being placed next to her seat. It shocked me more that she then went and got another accessibility chair for her friend and placed it in such a way as to obscure the view of the existing one (whose occupant had just left for a quick loo break).
If Roald Dahl hadn’t already created The Trunchball, I’d be getting inspired to invent her right there.
The final speaker of the day was current children’s laureate Joseph Coelho. After some awesome tips on encouraging a love of poetry among young learners (for which, if you’re interested, make sure you’re subscribed to that Education newsletter of mine), he proceeded to try creating an original poem with the conference audience on the topic of teaching.
“So,” he began. “Can I have a metaphor for teaching?”
“Hell!” came an eager cry from somewhere in the hall, resulting in resounding laughter.
“OK… And some onomatopoeia?”
“Banging your head on the wall…!” yelled another, prompting yet more raucous merriment.
“How about some repetition?”
“Aaaaaaaa! Aaaaaaaa! Aaaaaaaa…!”
The crowd were ecstatic. And who’d suggested that last one?
Yup: the Interruptor.
Coelho reflected the delight of his audience, but I sat there feeling increasingly uncomfortable. This was a room full of people that our children were expected to look up to, ostensibly here to explore the importance of sharing joy with children – but all they had to share was disillusionment. They were outraged, true, but either disproportionally pessimistic or astonishingly apathetic.
To finish his poem, Coelho asked for a simile for teaching.
“Bread,” I said, before anyone else could offer anything.
Bemused, Coelho caught my eye. “Bread? How’s that?”
“Because it has many different flavours, and is essential to life – but it can kill some people.”
Maybe he didn’t catch the end of my explanation, or maybe he astutely ignored it so his poem could at least end on a positive: “…essential to life.”
Afterward, I joined the queue of teachers keen to show their classes a selfie with Coelho. When I reached him, we were soon deep in conversation about the struggle to spark optimism within the current climate of education – but also the joy of sharing creativity with the next generation.
Alas, the distraction of that conversation left me with the regret of not nabbing a selfie with him myself.
Still, like Coelho, I should make an effort to end on a positive. And that, as expected, was the litter picking on Sunday, with our local Green councillor, Lara Davenport-Ray. Her newsletter had attracted a sizeable number of families who were now cheerily giving up a few hours of their weekend to protect the beauty and wildlife of their local area.
From Brighton to WriteOn to Detritus – Gone…
Maybe there is reason to be optimistic.
In return for the smiles these words gave you, please send them to a friend!
You’ll then get two bonus smiles: one for bringing joy to your friend, and one for my mahoosive gratitude. $:-D