March Newsletter
Hello Little Green Pig friends and followers,
Welcome to our March Newsletter and Happy World Book Day! Perhaps you have embraced the day and are dressed up as your favourite book character or just taking a moment to appreciate the wonder of books. This month we share news of our most recent after school club adventures from Eastbourne's new publication to a film featuring some brilliant puppets, our next podcast episode produced for the first time by our Young Writers Collective and how your vote could help us get a £1,000 donation.
Make a cuppa and read on to find out more....
From Nikki, Jo, Nicky, Sally and all the Little Green Pig team
WHAT’S BEEN HAPPENING AT LITTLE GREEN PIG
Longhill’s Crazy Writing Youth Podcast
Click here to listen to the fourth Little Green Pig podcast.
We are excited to share with you our fourth podcast, and our first created by our Young Writers Collective at Longhill High School, sharing their poetry and spoken word by young people, for young people. For the past two and a half years, a group of talented students at Longhill High School in Brighton have been writing poetry and spoken word at a lunchtime club. In this episode our Longhill hosts Henry and Eden introduce us to some of the writing that has been crafted and why some of them choose to be part of Young Writers Collective. Featuring poetry and interviews with these talented 11 to 16 year old writers, including an interview with their fantastic workshop leader poet Roy McFarlane. Powerful poems about friendship, football, freedom to express yourself and more! Funded thanks to The Vakil Foundation and edited by Chris Callard and Sally Woodcock for Little Green Pig.
Puppetry at Moulsecoomb Primary
Children at our Moulsecoomb Club have had an exciting time working with local puppeteer and theatre maker Darren East to create some brilliant puppets and explore their creativity through making and writing. They made the puppets from recycled materials, then created scripts to explore dialogue and playwriting supported by their workshop leader Bex Large. These mini plays starred their very own puppets which have been edited by Darren into this wonderful short film which you can view here.
Working with illustrator Giulia Casarotto at Langney Primary
There was much sadness and the odd tear as we bade farewell for now to our after school club sessions at Langney Primary in Eastbourne. This term the children were delighted to work with local illustrator Giulia Casarotto who listened carefully to the amazing array of stories they had written about from thunder swords to nightmare rabbits in their first collection entitled 'The Dark Dangerous Immortal Door'. Giulia went away and created fantastic illustrations to bring their imaginative stories to life. The children were so excited to see their work in print with such professional illustrations, one child commented "It's awesome, I like the art style!" and they proudly read from their books at a final sharing attended by parents and staff. We hope to be back in Eastbourne soon. A big thank you to our wonderful workshop leader Georgina Aboud and workshop assistant Chara Vlachaki.
Our Mini-Mentors are alumni of the After-School Clubs. We're delighted to welcome them back in this new role: assisting the workshop leaders, documenting our projects, hosting events and being excellent role models for the other children
Mini-Mentor Thejal wrote this report for the newsletter:
"The children at Monday club in Whitehawk Library did an amazing project on Christmas poems. Here are some reasons why they enjoy the project.
They think that it is fun, they enjoy rhyming poems and think that they get to be more creative here than at school. The workshop leader, Natalie, thought it would've been fun for young writers to perform."
We are recruiting for the Little Green Pig Youth Board!
Our Youth Board is a group of creative young people who meet once every 3 months to share their ideas with each other and with us, helping steer Little Green Pig in the right direction. If you know any young people, aged 14-18 who might be interested then we’d love to hear from them.
For more information and to fill out an expression of interest form please click here or email sally@littlegreenpig.org.uk
The deadline for applications is 22nd April 2024.
Nominate us for £1,000 donation
Nominate us to for a £1,000 donation from the Movement for Good.
Movement for Good is an annual programme of giving that anyone can get involved in, and again this year they’ll be donating over £1 million to charities and good causes nominated by you.
Please click on this link midnight on 17th March to nominate Little Green Pig.
The Whole Hog Quiz Night
Thanks to all those who joined us for the Whole Hog Quiz Night hosted by the Grand Central. We raised a total of £1914 so a massive thank you to everyone involved including our brilliant board who organised the evening and Chair and compare extraordinaire Pete Lawson.
Big thanks too to all those who donated the very sought-after raffle prizes:
Grand Central
Brighton Beach House
Grand Hotel Brighton
Earth and Stars
Fatto a Mano Pizzeria
Unbarred Brewery and Taproom
Duke of York's Picturehouse
Aesop
Wildsmith Skin
The Lavender Room
Headmasters
Gunn's Florist
HooglyTea
Embers Restaurant
Brighton Gin
Our Daily Edit
Faye Bridgwater
Peter James
Araminta Hall
Dorothy Koomson
Eva Carter (Kate Harrison)
Volunteering News
Fancy a new adventure this year? For 2024, we'd love to welcome new volunteers to our team. We're recruiting now for new Story Mentors and Illustrators across Brighton, Eastbourne and Worthing. There's no better time to sign up to find out more and get involved! Join our team of 40 current volunteers. Find out how you can train to become one of our amazing team of Story Mentors on the website here, or get in touch with Sally, our Volunteer Manager. Full support and training, travel expenses, and DBS checks are provided.
Our next volunteer training session is on Wednesday 27th March 4 - 6pm at Community Base. Email Sally to book your place.
Mentors often feedback on how much they learn and gain from the experience of supporting young writers too - it's a two way learning process!