Creative Manifesto

Our Aims

Creative Manifesto is Word Up North’s schools programme. It reimagines and redevelops what a school programme looks like, evolving beyond one-off author visits or one-size-fits-all workshops. We aim to offer bespoke programmes that develop students’ creative writing, self-expression and performance skills and tie into each schools’ curriculum and targets, meeting the needs of both teachers and learners.

Through a series of workshops, Creative Manifesto is intended to help students to find their voice, express their views and expand their ideas through a range of creative mediums, including but not limited to creative writing. The workshops aim to offer more creative freedom than a traditional lesson, while remaining rooted in students’ development and progress. There is a particular focus on the creative writing, oracy and presentation skills that form part of GCSE assessments, but also more widely on building students’ real-world skills, confidence, self-expression, performance, digital skills and connecting to their future career aspirations.

What we do

We work in close collaboration with each school at the outset of the programme, consulting with teachers to identify how our workshops can best meet the needs of both teachers and learners. Informed by these consultations, we develop an offer centred around a creative medium that will engage students and build their skills and confidence while tying into the curriculum and each class’s individual scheme of work.

Creative mediums that we’ve utilised in our Creative Manifesto sessions include:

• Poetry writing
• Slam poetry performance
• Script writing
• Film making
• Speech writing
• Illustration
• Podcasting

We work with highly skilled, experienced creative facilitators who deliver the Creative Manifesto workshops in schools. To date, we have worked with:

• Emma Rochford-Ridgway – Creative learning producer and former English teacher who has conducted initial consultations with teachers for Creative Manifesto.
• Andy Craven-Griffiths – a writer, performer and educator who has run poetry workshops for 50,000 young people across the UK and internationally, and delivered workshops for The British Council, the NHS, Arvon, the Southbank Centre, Leeds Playhouse and Bradford 2025.
• Sai Murray – a writer, educator, poet and graphic artist who has performed his ‘seriously playful and playfully serious’ poetry throughout the UK, across the US, Afrika and the Caribbean and has helped develop several art-activist initiatives. Sai is a founding artistic director of Platform’s youth arts and campaigning program: Voices that Shake! and is a leading youth poet coach.
• Chris Mould – an award-winning illustrator and writer who has has worked with publishers including Oxford University Press, Bloomsbury, Canongate, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House. His reimagining of Ted Hughes’ The Iron Man was shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal and was selected by Waterstones and Foyles’ as a Book of the Year in 2019.
• Irene Lofthouse – a scriptwriter, social historian, author and performer who regularly facilitates writing and storytelling workshops for both primary and secondary schools. She has worked with a variety of literature festivals across the UK and developed creative content for Historic England, Leeds Beckett University, Bradford City of Film, Durham Wildlife Trust, the National Literacy Trust, Alnwick Castle, and many museums and libraries.
• Louisa Rose Mackleston – an award-winning filmmaker and founder of Northern Fortress Films, an independent Production Company based in Bradford. Louise has been recognised within the industry for her work on creating social change through film and promoting social mobility through careers in the screen industries.
• BCB Radio team – a volunteer-led, community broadcasting organization in Bradford that uses engagement with community radio as a tool for personal development, community empowerment and social change.