Park Community School - Lyric Workshops

This week I was lucky enough to be invited back to the lovely Park Community School in Havant for a whole day of assemblies and lyrics workshops. This was my second visit to the school and everyone was so warm and welcoming, it was a brilliant day!

I started out the morning with back to back assemblies to the whole of Year 8 and Year 9 where I performed two songs from “The Songs You’ve Never Heard” and spoke to the audience about my books and music. It was so nice to be able to share live songs with the students and answer all their thoughtful questions.

After assembly, was my first lyric workshop with around 20 students in Year 8. This was my first time hosting a creative writing activity and I was so pleased to see everyone getting so involved with the tasks! We talked about multiple lyric writing techniques and all came up with song title ideas followed by four lines of original lyrics. The results were varied and brilliant, and some people even went on to expand their ideas after the session!

Later in the afternoon I gave my third and final assembly talk with Year 7 (who asked the most questions and grooved the hardest!!), followed by another lyric workshop, this time with a selected group of Year 7s. This was such a great and friendly discussion about music and songwriting and I loved hearing all the results!

I finished up my day chatting to a group of Year 11s in the library and then joined the after school book quiz where our team stormed ahead only to end up losing (sorry guys lol!)… Everyone was so funny and engaged, it was amazing to meet so many students, sign books, pose for selfies and chat about all sorts of different topics!

Thank you so much to Park’s wonderful librarian Ann-Marie for arranging the event and supporting me on the day - I’ve heard some lovely feedback from the students and teachers and I hope we’ll all get to do it again soon!