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06 June 2026

Junior & Young Writers Week 6: Food for Thought

For this week's foodie-themed workshop, the groups started by writing about their favourite vegetables (or the ones they absolutely despise), using all five senses. Where do they eat it? What makes it their favourite? What does it smell, taste, sound, or feel like?

Potatoes and carrots were by far the most popular choices, with cucumbers also receiving plenty of support.

Next, everyone chose either their original vegetable or a new fruit or vegetable and wrote a poem or the beginning of a story from its point of view. The idea was to start literally and then see where their imagination took them, which led to some wonderfully strange and descriptive stories.

We had a poetic onion reflecting on all the people it had made cry, an ancient potato forgotten beneath the earth for centuries, a potato finally freed from its cupboard prison only to be immediately mashed, and a wonderfully Scottish carrot who escaped captivity and went on to rescue other vegetables.

For our final writing exercise, the groups picked one of the following titles: A Brave Character's Story, The Broccoli Forest, Cabbage Dreams and Onion Tears, Relish a Radish, or Ode to a Potato.

From these prompts came a rhyming poem about a potato's great escape, the story of a wanted vegetable with a reward of fertiliser on its head taking refuge in a broccoli forest, and a lonely, knobbly, bumpy potato recounting its near-death experience.

To finish the session, the groups created entire worlds made from food. There were gravel paths made from grains, carrot gates, valleys filled with garlic cloves, and beans growing like grass. We also discovered Spinach Tower, the Celery Hotel, and a house made entirely of meat, which was 'admittedly, a bad idea'.

The groups came up with brilliantly imaginative ideas, proving that even the humble potato can have quite the adventure.

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