The Schools Writing Trail was in situ around Manchester City Centre from 1-15th June 2023 across 8 venues and featured young writers from 40 different schools across Greater Manchester. Now that the Trail has ended, we have digitised the artwork and writing here as a trail archive to be visited again and again.

Comino Poet in Residence Project

The Comino Poet in Residence project is a collaboration between the Manchester Poetry Library at Manchester Metropolitan University and The Comino Foundation.

Pupils from mix of Greater Manchester primary and secondary schools worked with student poets from Manchester Metropolitan University who, together with teachers from the school and a cultural partner from city’s wide range of museums, galleries, libraries and theatres, devised a poetry project.

The projects aimed to give children who take part an appreciation of poetry as an artform, an opportunity to work alongside a poet and an awareness of some of the fantastic cultural organisations on their doorstep.

Pupils visited the cultural venues and, with the poet, developed their own poetic responses.

Mother Tongue, Other Tongue

Mother Tongue Other Tongue is a multi-lingual poetry competition organised annually by the Manchester Poetry Library at Manchester Metropolitan University. It is launched annually on February 22nd, which is International Mother Language Day. Each year, dozens of young people have their work published in an anthology which celebrates the many languages and cultures that make up Great Britain today.

Details of the annual competition, including pdfs of the anthologies, can be found on the Mother Tongue Other Tongue website.

‘Mother Tongue’ is an opportunity for young people between the ages of 8-18 to share a poem written in their ‘mother tongue’. This can be an original piece of writing or a piece shared or remembered. This category celebrates poetry and culture from an unlimited number of languages, as pieces are selected not on the submitted piece of work but on the basis of a commentary that explains why the poem, lullaby or song is important to the young person who has shared it.

‘Other Tongue’ challenges young people between the ages of 8-18 to be creative in a language that they are learning. This is a selection of work published in this category in 2022:

Details of the annual competition, including pdfs of the anthologies, can be found on the Mother Tongue Other Tongue website.

Saturday Club

Writing & Talking Saturday Club is part of a National Saturday Club initiative that sees free Saturday sessions for 14-16 year olds, on a range of topics, running at Higher Education institutions all over England. Writing and Talking club members in Manchester come to Manchester Metropolitan University each week between February and June, to work alongside professional writers, poets and artists and to explore their own creative ideas in a range of media. Work created is displayed every year in London, alongside work from all of the other Saturday Clubs that run all over England.

Download and read the excellent work by these young stars from all of the above projects below.