Forest Fields Primary School in Nottingham gets exclusive access to crime and mystery writing workshop from author Dave Cousins!
We've teamed up with Children’s author Dave Cousins and the Author’s Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) to bring Dave's exciting crime and mystery writing workshop to Forest Fields Primary School in Nottingham and gift each participating pupil a free book.
Dave Cousins, author and illustrator of 15 Days Without A Head and Charlie Merrick’s Misfits, gave Year 5 at the school top secret access to his mysterious, entertaining online workshop which consisted of a series of fun and creative activities that gave pupils a flavour of what it is like to develop and write a crime and mystery story.
Dave is a lifelong fan of crime and mystery stories and his digital workshop is being run in support of the Ruth Rendell Award. The Award was launched in 2016 by the National Literacy Trust and ALCS in honour of crime writer Ruth Rendell, and is given to the author or writer who has made the biggest difference to literacy in the UK in the past year. The winner for 2020 was poet and hip hop artist Karl Nova.
In the workshop Dave shared his journey to becoming a writer from his dreams of walking on the moon to drawing comics in his bedroom, and activities included a quiz, writing, illustrating, character developing and even some code breaking, all building up to challenging pupils to go and write their own crime and mystery story. Dave also read part of his latest novel, A Robot Ate My Grandma and each pupil received a copy to take home and keep.
"I really enjoy sharing tips to help young people get creative and write their own stories. I’ve always been a huge fun of crime and mystery books so was delighted to team up with the National Literacy Trust and ALCS to create this workshop. I certainly had a lot of fun creating it and I hope that Year 5 at Forest Fields Primary School had fun taking part! I can’t wait to read their stories!”
Author Dave Cousins
“We’d like to thank Dave for his crime and mystery writing workshop, it’s been a great way to explore the genre of crime writing with our pupils. The class particularly enjoyed the character development activity and the code breaking activity!”
Evdokiya Somersall-Heath, Teacher at Forest Fields Primary
The class are also able to follow the workshop with an additional session where Dave will answer questions and offer feedback on the work they create.
Dave’s crime and mystery workshop is available to a school in each of the National Literacy Trust’s Hub areas across the country. Dave’s visit to Forest Fields Primary School was supported by our Read On Nottingham campaign.