We’re delighted to have teamed up with children’s author Dave Cousins and the Author’s Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) to bring an exciting crime and mystery writing workshop to a school in each of our Hub areas and gift each participating pupil with a free book!
Dave Cousins, author and illustrator of 15 Days Without A Head and Charlie Merrick’s Misfits (Oxford University Press) gave Year 5 students across our Hub areas a 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 we ran 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 (Little Tiger Press) 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 pupils had fun taking part!
Author, Dave Cousins
Huge thank you to Dave for creating such a brilliant and engaging workshop, and well done to the participating schools: Mountford Manor Primary School (Swindon), Sandown Primary School (Hastings), St Augustine's Junior School (Peterborough), Forest Fields Primary School (Nottingham) Saint Nathaniel's Academy (Stoke), Thorntree Academy (Middlesbrough) Barrowcliff School (North Yorkshire Coast), Horton Park Academy (Bradford), Nishkam Primary School (Birmingham), Sacred Heart Primary School (The Black Country), Peel Hall Primary School (Manchester), Blackpool Academy Gateway (Blackpool), Dunsville Primary School (Doncaster) and South Bank Primary School (North East).
