Coram Voices Writing Competition

After our spectacular Care Day event in February, which featured many fantastic poems written by our young people, we saw an appetite for more creative writing opportunities. Some of our Five Rivers’ children saw an opportunity to get involved in the Coram Voices Writing Competition, and they jumped at the chance to enter and asked our Youth Participation group for help to put together their entries.

Wherever possible, we encourage our children to find creative ways of expressing themselves. We love introducing new ways for them to do this and try to offer as much support as we can. We were very excited to hear that our children were interested in entering the competition. We have had a sneak peek at some of their work – it’s excellent. The most important thing is that our children have fun and enjoy the process of learning about creative writing and we have supported those who felt confident enough to submit an entry.

The theme of this year’s competition is ‘What Makes Life Good’. Entries can be a 500-word poem, short story, rap, or newspaper article, and there are four age categories. Our Youth Participation group, which works closely with all our children and young people throughout the year, arranged some fun, interactive online workshops during March, to support the children in developing their entries. They were all really excited about participating in the workshops which included a rap master class with care-experienced rapper, Ric Flo, and a poetry workshop with poet, Clare Shaw. These workshops also gave the children an opportunity to work online together and discuss their entries. They’ve been so enthusiastic about the competition; it’s been a really fun project to help them with during lockdown.

Coram Voice is a leading children’s rights organisation that wants to improve the lives of children in care. Their annual creative writing competition encourages children to stretch their creative minds and enter for the chance of winning an award. This year’s award ceremony will take place online and will be presented by actor, Peter Capaldi, who portrayed the twelfth incarnation of the Doctor, in Doctor Who. A lot of our children are Doctor Who fans and are very excited about the prospect of getting to attend the award ceremony!

We wish all those that entered the best of luck!