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Regular news and insight from our many poets, writers, educators and facilitators

08 November 2025

Posted by Amelia Simpson

Fireworks

Ali Sparkes is the lead facilitator; she is a children’s author who leads writing sessions for Junior and Young Writers every Saturday morning at MAST Mayflower Studios. To learn more about her, visit her website: https://www.alisparkes.com and click on her profile: https://artfulscribe.co.uk/facilitators/ali-sparkes

We started with some fill in fun to introduce Amelia (me) to the group! 


The stories often ended with me fleeing the room, screaming, or in shock! 

The younger group emphasised their dark and sinister sense of humour during the fill-in fun, and the older group took the opportunity to run with the story, taking my character everywhere, from conversations with cats in the Barova room to conversations with escaped convicts.


Very on theme for early November, Ali asked us if we had been to a firework show this week, and asked us to give her loads of similes and metaphors for the sights and sounds of a firework display:


  • Shocking 

  • Smokey 

  • Deafening

  • Flowers


We then took all the words we came with to write poems describing a firework display. 

Isabella told her story through the point of view of the box the fireworks fired out of! A very original perspective. 


After snack time, our next challenge was to create a ‘there will be fireworks’ script of an argument between two people… This took both groups in some wild directions: 


Full-on arguments about which restaurant to visit (McDonald's or KFC) 

Two girls are enthralled in what starts as a light argument, but then turns very pointed and personal. I co-authored with Florence an argument between a cookie and a piece of dough. 


Writer of the week was a hard one, especially with so much creativity and thought that went into everyone's fill-in fun.

We had two Junior Writers of the Week, Zoya & Hibah  

Our Young Writer of the Week was Max 

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