Special Guest Northern Highlight - Grimm & Co.

SPECIAL GUEST NORTHERN HIGHLIGHT

 Deborah Bullivant, CEO and Founding Director Grimm & Co.

Can you start by telling us a little about Grimm and Co?

Grimm & Co is a literacy charity with the mission to change lives, one story at a time. We offer free creative writing workshops to children and young people, inspiring confidence, self belief and self esteem, championing the writer in every child. We work with young people from marginalised communities across Rotherham, including vulnerable groups, those with protected characteristics, and young people who are struggling/troubled with their learning/whole life experiences. Since opening our doors to schools and families in 2015, and based almost solely on word of mouth, we have been inundated, to such a degree that we have outgrown our original premises, with waiting lists filled by schools and communities eager to join our activities. By entering Grimm & Co you are entering a magical, experiential, and interactive theatre: a shop that supplies essential wares to magical beings. This is a real, functioning shop, authentic and of high quality, that brings stories to life through the magic of fairy tales and imagination. Even throughout lockdown, our shop has remained open online, perfect for stocking up on your wild schemes, mysterious plots, and broomsticks! 

Grimm & Co, Rotherham 

Thanks to the continued support we have received from Arts Council England, we have now moved to a much larger premises within Rotherham town centre.  Once the construction project is complete, we will be able to reach many more marginalised children and families, and bring a wondrous experience into their lives.

How does your location in South Yorkshire impact on your work?

Grimm & Co services Yorkshire and Humberside, but is based in Rotherham in South Yorkshire. We are on the doorstep of children in the town and the surrounding South Yorkshire region who are often left behind, and we are primarily here to support those who are disadvantaged within these communities. We have had offers of premises in other, more affluent areas, but we wanted to be centred within the communities that need our support the most. The families and young people are our reason for being, and an integral part of delivering what the community needs. We want to offer an experience that Rotherham children can be proud of. 

At Wentworth Woodhouse engaging families in writing activities

Why is it so important to give every child the opportunity to find pleasure in writing?

Writing is important in almost all aspects of our lives. Without good literacy skills, young people will struggle in school lessons and in exams, affecting their confidence and self- esteem, and this will affect the rest of their lives. How do you get on in your life if you can't write a job application form or a CV? Large numbers of young people in this area don't own any books, so we give books away whenever we can, finding new homes for books from our Forgotten Library. Reading and writing are intertwined, so we work with organisations such as The Reading Agency to encourage young people and families to read for pleasure. We aim to break the cycle of low literacy levels within families, giving the young people the skills and confidence to grow.

What for you is the 'Spirit of the North'?

For me, it's all about the people and about authenticity. It's friendliness and warmth, scenery that is a feast for the eyes, good, homely comfort food, and fresh Yorkshire air.  We need to look into bottling that for our magical apothecary!  

Grimm & Co apothecary

Who for you are the great northern writers?

One great favourite of ours is Joanne Harris, who we are so lucky to have as a patron.  Jeremy Dyson of course, who is our Writer in Residence and whose name can be found in so many successful comedy programmes.  Ted Hughes has the Rotherham connection, and we are currently working with 10 local schools with our immersive theatre space, based on The Iron Man. 

What plans do you have in the pipeline as school visits and group meetings begin to open up again?

When we went into lockdown in March 2020, our shop closed and all school visits ceased immediately. We regularly run 3-4 out of school workshops per week face-to-face, for different groups of children and young people. Within days, our creative offering moved online and sessions continued digitally. We also created lots of online activities for families and young people to have a go at while schools were closed. We felt it was so important to have a range of fun, creative activities that children could access without pressure, to help them through such a difficult time. We are starting to make plans for face-to-face activities again, and also hope to get out into the communities to deliver workshops where they are needed.

Now that schools are open again, we have relaunched a project that was due to start last year, bringing immersive theatre spaces into 10 local schools. Our Chapter and Verse project was funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, and it enables us to deliver a teacher development programme in these schools, while reigniting the imaginations and the passion for learning in young people. 

We have also developed our storymaking workshops so that they can be delivered digitally and in blended sessions, so that we can continue to bring a bit of magic into a classful of children, even though they cannot currently visit our site.

Magic at Grimm & Co

What would you like to see from Publishing and the creative industries in the North?

We would love to see more of a focus on diversity and representation in publishing. Young people especially need to see themselves in literature, so I think we can do more to represent lived experience and cultural diversity. We are working on bringing in more folk and fairytales from around the world - after all, the Grimm brothers collected many many stories, and we want to represent all those within Grimm & Co.

You can find out more about Grimm & Co at www.grimmandco.co.uk and follow them on Twitter and Instagram