National Saturday Club Summer Show
Sophie Brown reports on the country’s first creative writing Saturday Club

This year, WCN piloted the country’s first Writing and Talking Saturday Club in partnership with the University of East Anglia, with support from the Saturday Club Trust. Over eight weeks, 15 KS4 students from Norwich and the surrounding area were challenged to create their own People’s City of Literature.

Below, Sophie Brown from Fakenham Academy describes her experience of visiting the National Saturday Club Summer Show 2017 in order to showcase the group’s final work.


On Saturday 17 June, the Writing and Talking Saturday Club were invited to the National Saturday Club Summer Show at Somerset House, London. As a member of the group, I was lucky enough to go to the event and see our work on display. The display, which was beautiful, followed our journey creating our City of Literature session by session. Our work was printed on the walls and a film documenting our sessions, as well as our showcase, was running. It was indescribable seeing our work presented professionally, especially in the anthology, which was presented to us by Francis and John Sorrell. The whole showcase was really well presented and thought through making sure everyone had work on display. I believe it captured our generation’s thinking and opinions perfectly.

it captured our generation’s thinking and opinions perfectly

I am so pleased that Mr and Mrs Sorrell created the Saturday Club Trust as it has been an amazing experience. To meet like-minded and talented people, collaborate with them and see our work published has been incredible. I didn’t realise the scale of the work the trust does until I was invited to London, it highlighted how many teenagers want to take part in opportunities such as this. The National Saturday Club gives teenagers a chance to make their voice heard. If you do get an opportunity to take part in a Saturday Club as a tutor or student please do so; I had so much fun taking part. I would also like to thank both Writers’ Centre Norwich and the University of East Anglia for running the course I participated in. Hopefully, they will consider running it again soon.

Find out more about our work with schools >>

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