This year for World Book Day, we’re offering two creative writing workshops and a poetry and rap performance your students will love.
THE SECRET LIFE OF STUFF
🕒 11.25am–12.15pm UK time
(50 minutes)
An imaginative, witty writing workshop where everyday objects reveal wild personalities, secret motives, and hidden inner lives. After hearing Mark’s much-requested Lego poem, students explore how personification, perspective, and status can transform the ordinary into something extraordinary.
They’ll experiment with assonance, multisyllabic rhyme, and sensory detail to craft writing that feels alive — using the same techniques professional poets rely on. Then, students will choose their own everyday object and bring it to life. Will it turn out to be a gentle hero, a misunderstood oddball, or a small but determined villain plotting to ruin everyone’s day?
This session builds key skills that link beautifully to KS3 poetry and creative-writing aims: developing voice, controlling tone, choosing precise vocabulary, and crafting imaginative viewpoints — all while having far too much fun with stationery.
Outcome: A unique 8–12 line poem or rap from the perspective of a normally overlooked object.
Capacity: Class-sized groups (one ticket per class).
Secondary School Workshops
HOW TO STEAL A MASTERPIECE
🕒 3.30pm-4.15pm UK time
(45 minutes)
A cinematic descriptive-writing session that blends atmosphere, originality, and character. Students explore the tension between cliché and creativity before zooming into a moody art-gallery scene. They’ll learn how to craft vivid descriptions, reveal details through setting, and experiment with sentence structures designed for maximum impact.
We’ll look at how to create environments that demand attention through technique and structural choices, and how to build unique, memorable characters whose motives are shown — not told. (In this session, we might even steal a few tricks from master storytellers… all strictly legal, of course.)
This workshop naturally supports the skills assessed in GCSE descriptive writing: crafting engaging openings, using precise detail, controlling atmosphere, shaping structural choices, and developing convincing character and setting.
Outcome: A strong descriptive passage blending character, atmosphere, and setting.
Capacity: Class-sized groups (one ticket per class).
ideal for KS3
ideal for KS3
Secondary School Performance
Meet The Poet: From Page To Stage
🕒 2:25pm-2.55pm UK time
(30 minutes)
Join poet and performer Mark Grist for a lively 30-minute poetry performance created especially for KS3, KS4 and KS5 students. Mark will share a range of new poems and raps — packed with rhythm, rhyme and imagination — alongside stories from his life as a published poet and writer.
Throughout the session, Mark highlights the choices poets make to create voice, build tension and land emotional impact, giving students a real insight into the writer’s craft. It’s a fun, engaging way to see the techniques they study in English — imagery, structure, tone, performance, perspective — brought vividly to life.
There’ll also be time for students to ask questions via the chat.
The session works brilliantly for large groups in a hall or assembly space (though tuning in from your classroom works just as well).