Starting in March, I got myself into an immersive journey of writing creatively through the National Saturday Club. From our fantastic trips – Royal Opera House Masterclass and Chelmsford City Museum – to the wonderful guests we received, such as Lu Williams for zine-making and Marina Cusi for writing eco-poetry, I’ve learned that ‘being creative’ can be enhanced by acting, writing, crafting and sharing emotions with others and that this is what makes us special and distinguishes us from others with our originality.

During the National Saturday Club sessions, I learned to be free with my writing and brave with the emotions that I include in my poetry, as well as how to express them in intriguing ways that capture the audience. With all this experience, I was able to write a poem during Marina Cusi’s session that won first place at the Chelmsford City Museum’s competition in the 13-18 year category on the theme ‘Protecting Nature’ and many other poems which were included in the collaborative zine, and our collaborative podcast.

The Water Stirred with Memory

Cries, my dear mother sky, cries…
Her tears form rivers and oceans;
Humans are born,
through troubles and fears.

Soldiers on horseback fall
exultantly, one by one: their
crimson blood mixing in
the rivers; they now carry history.

So valiant these rivers are that
they can impetuously split
continents and countries apart
in borders; people are destined to live in them.

Humans may dust off their memories
of troubles and fears; triumphs and failures
from their past lives: Rivers and waters
never forget. They travel with this history
everywhere around the world, living
with it in the past, in the present, in the future:
All existing at the same time and in the same place

Ada Mazi

As the writing and talking National Saturday Club, we worked collaboratively to create our zine on the theme of the Essex Book Festival ‘This Land’.

We created our individual zines with the help of our amazing guest Lu Williams and shared our ideas with our friends and took their opinions on how we could improve our writing – these included poetry and short stories – then we included our self portraits and creative art, which we were taught by our lovely guest Lynn Excell! At last, we collected these individual zines and stitched them together to form the final product of our collaborative zine.

Within my own work towards the theme ‘This Land’, I included my own poetry: these were poems that expressed my own emotions via the metaphors of nature. In addition, I also included cut outs from magazines that related to my poems as best as possible and a self-drawing of a bird. With my individual zine, I aimed to show the viewers the beauty of poetry and art as well as how I wielded them to tell my own story formed by emotions and my own experience in life.

During our first session with our guest Michelle, I’ve learned that creating podcasts were really approachable and a really nice way to get across ideas, just like writing on paper. With other people in the group, we experimented with different recording devices to record our podcast and planned on what we could include in our podcast to make it interesting, informative and inspiring for the listeners.

In another session, we had an interview with Rob Jelly from BBC Radio 4 and asked him about his job and his daily life, linking it to the Essex book festival’s theme ‘This Land’. During the interview, I’ve learned that listening to the person we interview is as important as the questions we are prepared to ask, since this makes an interview more interesting and allows us to know the people we are interviewing better.

At our last session on the podcast, we decided to record the discussion we had with the group about how our zine’s were progressing and about our initial thoughts on what we think about creativity and on the topics that we might be talking about 25 years from now. In addition, we included two poems written and recited by me and also another poem written and recited by Joe.

Listen to the National Saturday Club podcasts here.

Throughout the process of making the podcast, I learned that working as a group helps our individual ideas to gain a new perspective and a stronger voice.

In my opinion, it is important to share our thoughts on issues, such as climate emergency, through the arts including writing and talking because we might be able to get the attention of the governments and the world to take care about these issues as well as allowing them to see how we feel about it in our immersive writing and speeches. This way, we are hoping that people around the world and the governments will feel sympathy and bring change in the near future: hopefully, this will show that power of words, language and creativity are as important as scientific developments and will encourage people to study and learn more about being creative in different ways to express their emotions, since this is not quite possible with the arithmetic ways of science.

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Through this screening, they want to bring volunteers, citizens, community leaders, decision-makers and students together to think positively about how the planet can become greener and fairer.

The FREE screening will be of the documentary 2040 and will take place on Friday 1st March, 3–6pm in room QUE 101.🎥

REGISTER your interest to take part https://kinema.com/events/2040-jgrpy2

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It is open to all 13-16 year olds living in and around the Chelmsford area who are passionate about writing and talking. Our young participants will explore multiple forms of writing, including zine-making, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, blogging etc, and talking, including spoken word poetry and podcasting.

The programme includes two trips to London: one for a visit backstage at Royal Opera House to see its workings, the other to attend the national exhibition of work at Somerset House, which will be showing work from National Saturday Clubs across the UK.

It is free to sign up but please note that there are only 15 places available so if you know someone who would benefit from taking part in the Club, make sure they get in quick. More information about the Club and the sign up link can be found here: https://saturday-club.org/club/essex-book-festival-aru-writing-talking/

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Anglia Ruskin University, Bishop Hall Lane, Chelmsford, CM1 1SQ
Friday 2nd June, 7.30pm

We are delighted to be launching this year’s Essex Book Festival with Guardian columnist and broadcaster Polly Toynbee. One of the most respected, prolific, and razor-sharp voices in social commentary uses the prism of her extraordinary family to examine the true state of class in Britain.

An Uneasy Inheritance: My Family and Other Radicals

While for generations Polly Toynbee’s ancestors have been committed left-wing rabble-rousers railing against injustice, they could never claim to be working class, settling instead for the prosperous life of academia or journalism enjoyed by their own forebears. So where does that leave their ideals of class equality?

Through a colourful, entertaining examination of her own family – which in addition to her writer father Philip and her historian grandfather Arnold contains everyone from the Glenconners to Jessica Mitford to Bertrand Russell and features ancestral home Castle Howard as a backdrop – Toynbee explores the myth of mobility, the guilt of privilege, and asks for a truly honest conversation about class in Britain.

About the author

Polly Toynbee is a journalist, author, and broadcaster. A Guardian columnist and broadcaster, she was formerly the BBC’s social affairs editor. She has written for the Observer, the Independent and Radio Times and been an editor at the Washington Monthly. She has won numerous awards including a National Press Award and the Orwell Prize for Journalism.

Follow Polly on Twitter @pollytoynbee

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