A secret place,
accessed through
a door in the
shelves.
Grimm & Co’s Writers’ Pad is our Yorkshire-wide centre, based in Rotherham, where young people aged 7 to 18 come and enjoy creative, imaginative happenings that lead to the joyful discovery of writing for pleasure.
Powerful imaginations unleash stories undreamed of from the mind to the page…
and it’s GREAT FUN! We take the latter very seriously.
If you read on you are sworn to secrecy.
There’s a secret door somewhere in the apothecary to the magical. Behind this you’ll find the Imagination Gym, Grimm’s WC and the beautiful Writers’ Pad.
What do we do?
We champion the writer in every child. We build confidence, self-esteem and skills in both workshops for schools and our out of school holiday clubs.
There’s a serious note to what we do as we are supporting our next generation to see themselves as writers, building confidence and skills with a ‘can do, want to do’ attitude. We are developing the capacity to use writing as a tool for resilience and helping young people to find their voices.
We challenge expectations and aspirations, as a kindling to the flame, nurturing development, teaching skills and nourishing imaginations.
How do we do it?
We run innovative, creative writing activities with one to one support and mentoring to help young people discover their potential.
We then publish the writing in a variety of ways to allow the rest of the world to experience the awe and wonder creations of our young writers.
We offer teacher workshops which explore imagination, child-led approaches and creative writing.
How did it all begin?
Inspiration came from a place called 826 Valencia in San Francisco, where Dave Eggers and educator Ninive Calegari created the ‘Pirate Supply Store’ and hidden writing centre.
They told us there was a centre in London, the Ministry of Stories, founded by Lucy Macnab, Ben Payne and Nick Hornby who encouraged and advised on their experiences. This helped immensely and we have now all joined a family, along with Little Green Pig in Brighton to work together, support each other, share experiences and further our development as a family.
