Build a Book Workshop Chapter 4 The shape of the workshop

 

Chapter 4 The shape of the workshop

The amount of time needed on each phase of the workshop will vary according to how long you are allowing in total and whether you are completing it all in one session or whether it is spread over several days, weeks or months.

The notes below will help you to decide how long you need for each activity. There is a suggested timetable at the end of this chapter.     

Establishing motivation

This may take a little less time if you have established a charity beforehand. Nevertheless, this tends to be a fixed event and takes about one hour. In this time you need to establish:

·         Which charity you will support, if you have not already done so

·         How the book will support the charity financially

·         How the book will support the charity in its theme

·         Who is the target reader of the book

  You might even like to discuss, during this time, the desired book length. For example a book containing 130 pages offers a good model, as the book will cost exactly £2.00 to print, if you use our printing suggestions. How will you arrive at that length? Will every student have at least one piece of work in there? This obviously relates to the size of your group. What will happen if the group produces more or less work than is needed?  You might like to forewarn the students about what might happen during editing.          

The creative writing element

This is perhaps the most crucial element and possibly what motivated you in the first place to establish the workshop.

In the following chapter, there are several suggested activities. Even in a workshop that is just one day long it is possible to complete many of these, though you might rule out longer fiction and articles unless you have an excellent strategy for post workshop completion.    

Generally, the writing should take just under half of the time you have for the full workshop. Naturally, some students will finish in this time, others won’t. It is possible to allow students to move on at their own pace. As they complete one creative writing exercise, they may move on to the next. Then they may start editing. Once they have polished pieces, they can start illustrating. Some can move straight on to design.

The creative writing exercises work well if you present each one and then allow half an hour or so – slightly less for the early exercise, slightly more for the later ones – and provide a written guide.

An alternative, especially if you know your group well, is to arrange tables for each activity, provide the written guide and you and your helper(s) wander round and give help and advice as it’s needed. As students complete one exercise, they move to another table. You can of course direct the students where to work according to what you know about their strengths and weaknesses.   

You can also stop the students every so often, and point out some common mistakes and highlight some very good work. This actually provides a welcome break for them.      

Word processing

Your students will at some point move from working on paper to working on a computer. This will vary according to your preference and that of your students.

One strategy is to allow part of the writing time for word processing. In this case writing plus word processing takes just over half of the time available.     

Unless your group has worked straight on to the computer and they also have very good IT skills, you will have to allow time for work to be completed post-workshop.

Remember also to create a strategy for saving work. Gather it all on to one disc or memory stick or get it saved to a shared area.

Whichever you do, someone, at some point – probably you – is going to have to do some donkey work.  

Editing

As students complete written work, they may move into editing. First, they will edit their own work and then they will work in pairs or small groups. This is all explained in the chapter on editing.

Also, there may be some editorial decisions to be made. If you have far more work than is required for the book, you and your students may need to exclude some work. Strategies for this are also explained in Chapter 7.         

Editing time will bleed into writing and illustrating times. One eighth of available time should be allowed for core editing activities.    

Illustrating

This can be very relaxing and very enjoyable. Students can move on to illustrating as they finish editing. Full details of how to organise this are contained in Chapter 8.  

Students will often work in silence at this point, especially if you are conducting the workshop over one day.  By now, they are tired and want to keep their thoughts to themselves.  It might be nice to play some quiet music in the background at this point.

Allow one eighth of time available for this, though the activity may bleed into editing and design times. 

Naturally, if your workshop is spread over several weeks and if it is part of the students’ normal curriculum, you can involve the art department in this in an exciting way.         

Design

This is about how the book is put together. You need to discuss this with your students.  You may well be able to do this as a whole group, especially for workshops that last just one or two days. You might allow half an hour for this.

Details of design strategies are given in the chapter on design.

If you are working over a longer period of time and with able students, you might consider creating a design team who will be responsible for putting the book together as a Word document. See Chapter 13.            

Marketing

Allow one eighth to one quarter of the time available for this and consider making it an on-going activity. You will need to spend some time discussing ideas and allow some time for students to work individually, in pairs or in small groups.   

More ideas are discussed in the Chapter 10.

Alternative ways of managing illustration, design and marketing

You could decide on teams for these three activities before the workshop or at the beginning of the workshop. Brief students on what is involved in all three activities. You may find it helpful to provide crib sheets describing each role. Sample crib sheets are provided in the photocopiable resource. 

Alternatively, you can allow student to choose which team to work with as they finish their editing and word-processing.

Design will probably take less time than the other two. Students just need to make a few decisions. Unless you have some very able students and some time afterwards, you will probably have to manage the technical aspects of design yourself or delegate to an expert. Once the design team is finished, members can choose whether to move on to illustration or marketing and publicity.

     

Build a Book Workshop Chapter 3 Working with a charity

 

Some advantages

Working with a charity can be extremely motivating for your students, and indeed for you. It gives your anthology a purpose: you want it to be good so that it will make money for the charity.

If you can tie the theme of your students’ work in with the charity, even better. This will actually provide some content for your students’ writing. For example, if you support a wild animal charity you might get your students to write about animals living in the wild. If you support a charity that looks into drugs for children with cancer, your students might write pieces that would amuse children. If you support a children’s hospital, you might produce work that would cheer up hospital patients who have a long wait.

If your book is good enough, and you have a good relationship with your charity, they may be willing to promote it for you. In addition, you could arrange further events for the charity and continue to sell the book. Your connection with this charity can become more than just about the book.    

Choosing you charity

It may seem rather obvious to pick a charity that is going to be popular. Our young students find charities to do with children or animals easy to relate to. Sometimes it’s good to pick one that has a direct contact with your school. It’s certainly good to pick one that has a local contact. Perhaps ideal is one that has a local connection but is part of a bigger organisation – a national or even international one.

You could, of course, also pick a school project – e.g. raising money for a new stage or a new floor for the Sports Hall.

The charity commission provides a searchable database: http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/. There are even instructions here about how to start your own charity, which might be appropriate is some cases. Oddly, this does not show some of the most obvious charities. ‘Remember a Charity’ does, even though it’s primarily an organisation for helping you to leave money to a charity in your will: http://www.rememberacharity.org.uk.

 Simply Googling the word “charity” brings several lists you can use. 

Etiquette

It is essential that you get your relationship with your charity right. Remember, you are there to support your charity; the charity is not there as a convenient hook for you and for your students’ work. These organisations have a real concern and are doing a real job.

One always has to be careful anyway that helping a charity is not just a way of making the helpers feel better about themselves. There is a world of difference between this and inspiring genuine passion about the cause in your students. However, it’s likely that the students will actually feel a genuine care. This will be reflected in the writing the writing and will motivate them to complete the book to a high standard.

As soon as you do anything for a charity – even just taking a collection at the end of a concert - you are in a relationship with that charity.  They need to be consulted.  Whatever you do is now associated with that charity. There must be nothing in what your students produce that is contrary to the aims of the charitable organisation. The book has to be good. It becomes a permanent link – it may turn up in any bookshop and sit on anyone’s bookshelf – especially as you are likely to use a print on demand printer so that the book will never go out of print. This means that you may never be seen to be doing anything contrary to the ideals of your chosen charity. Ever.  

You normally have to obtain a letter of engagement from your chosen charity. This will often enable you to use the charity’s logo in your book, mention that you are working with the charity and use the charity’s name in the promotion of your book.

Great, of course, if they can endorse your book, and perhaps provide a foreword.  

        Advance Planning

It is great to have your students chose the charity. However, if you wait for the start of the workshop, you miss all of the opportunities for advance planning.

So, it’s absolutely ideal if you can have access to your students beforehand so that you can discuss what sort of charity they would like to support. You could even get them involved in finding information. You may want to plan a series of meetings.

If you do this, you might even set up a small committee of students who can keep their eye on how the finances will work and who would be able to kick start the marketing.

Once you have decided on a charity, you need to get that all important letter of engagement. This will involve establishing:

·         How the charity will benefit from the book (I suggest offering £1.00 per copy and links to their JustGiving site)

·         How often they will be paid

·         Whether they want to provide some copy for you book – maybe a blurb about the charity or even an introduction to the book

·         Whether they can be involved in any book launch

·         Whether they can advertise your book at all

·          How long your agreement will last (though as mentioned above, your relationship will be permanent as you have a permanent link to a book whose sales may dip but that will never be out of print)    

  

 

Build a Book Workshop Chapter 2

 

Hopefully, you will now have made some of the crucial decisions we talked about in the previous chapters. You can’t really get down to detailed planning until you know the following:

·         Who will take part in the workshop

·         How you will time it

·         Whether you will complete tasks outside the core workshop time (and remember, some you will have to) 

·         Whether you are going to get outside help

·         Whether you have a predetermined theme for your anthology or whether you are going to negotiate this with your students as part of the workshop.

·         How you will cope with post-workshop processing e.g. getting the work finished and doing the technical tasks.

·         How you want to market the book – on top of what the students are doing   

The photocopiable resource contains a template of this list to aid you.

You may also find it useful to think about which charity to support. Even if you are going to invite students to decide for themselves, it is useful to have a few suggestions. You can also do some preliminary research on those that you choose. 

Your tasks 

You have a number of tasks to perform:

·         Make the decisions posted above.

·         Engage and enthuse your colleagues, students, their parents and the Board of Governors.

·         Contact all the support people, clarify their tasks, and complete any checks.  

·         Get out information about the workshop.

·         Plan the logistics of the day, including organising space.

·         Plan the activities of the day.

·         Contact the support workers and thank them.

·         Make sure that work is finished and edited.

·         Upload the book to a printer.

·         Market and sell the book.

·         Have a book launch

·         Evaluate the whole workshop and decide whether to do it again. Consider any changes you might make.

·         Extend the life of the book.      

Critical time-planning

Many projects fall apart because critical time-planning has been ignored. Basically, critical time-planning is recognising that you can’t install the roller-blind in the bathroom before you have put down the foundations of the house. Some tasks cannot be started until others have been completed.  

The check-list at the end of this chapter suggests a critical-time plan for your event. The timings assume you are working mainly on your own and you are allowed no extra time for planning your workshop. How you want to market the book – on top of what the students are doing   

You can shorten this: another element of critical-time planning is that bringing in more labour can shorten the time taken for the job. If you want a house fitted out in a week instead of a month, you employ four carpenters instead of one.        

Space for your workshop

You might like to give some thought to where the workshop might take place. It’s ideal to have easy access to the following:

·         Space where the students can sit and listen to you, a colleague or a visiting writer. Sitting in a circle allows for an effective intimacy.

·         Space where students can work on their own.

·         Space where students can work in small groups.

·         A suite of computers, though a class set of lap tops or iPads may also work.

The photocopiable resource contains a template of this list to aid you.

Don’t forget also to arrange a logical way of getting the students’ work in one place. It’s an idea to get the site-manager on board. Move furniture if you have to.

If you’re going to be working in several different rooms, take care that you can easily monitor that the students stay in the rooms and don’t spend too much time moving between rooms.

        Some points to ponder

Enthusing others

This really will take time and persistence. Eventually, if you manage to stay enthusiastic yourself, others will catch on. 

Contacting support workers

You will need to communicate with these several times. See checklist.

Note also that if you are working with professional writers who are going to be paid, they will have their own terms and conditions. These may be at odds with your school’s terms and conditions. Professional writers are generally registered self-employed and pay their own National Insurance contributions. It is extremely irksome to them if your school insists on processing them through payroll as they then have to pay National Insurance again.  In fact, many refuse downright to work with schools that insist on this. I personally even find it a bit of an affront to be asked to provide a company invoice. I have a clear individual relationship with the Inland Revenue. And if you insist on a company invoice, that “company” may be VAT registered so you may have to pay VAT on the workshop.

Do also remember that if you insist on a  CRB check it will take a while to complete. You might consider only working with people who already have a check or indeed if it is actually necessary as the visitor will never be left alone with students. 

And check out the situation with public liability insurance. Make sure that you and relevant office staff are clear about all of these arrangements.

It is also courteous to pay your visitor promptly.

Before the workshop, make sure they have your contact details and instructions about how to get into the school and where to park if coming by car. It’s often an idea to have them arrive about half an hour after school has started, so that they don’t get mixed up with parents arriving.  

On the day, remember to allow comfort breaks and to feed and water your guest. Allow a little time at the end of the day to get some immediate feedback and make sure your guest knows how to get out of the building. It’s also rather nice if you get a student to thank them at the end of the day – even if they don’t really need thanks as they’re being paid.    

Extending the life of your book

You will probably sell the most number of copies of your book at your book launch and to the friends and a family of the students who appear in it.

It’s a good idea also to badger your colleagues, your board of governors and your PTA – for a little while at least.

A good strategy is to make sure the Head is aware of the whole process and is behind you. S/he will then want to show it off at open evenings, parents’ evenings and to all visitors including the Ofsted inspector. Of course, if you do another Build a Book workshop, the new book will have to take pride of place, but you can always promote you backlist.

Look out for those occasions when you can wheel out your books again – Summer Fetes, Christmas Bazaars etc. Could you get students to read out some of what they have written in assemblies, or at the end-of-term concert?  

If you are working with a charity, they may be willing to support the book – perhaps include it in a Christmas catalogue, at one of their shops or on their web site. You could also arrange other events which support the charity and at which you can sell further copies of the book.          

 

More about all of this in Chapter 10.

 

Your check list

A template for this list is contained in the photocopiable resource.

Task	Time	Your date
Make the decisions posted above.	At least six months before workshop
Engage and enthuse your colleagues, students, their parents and the Board of Governors.	As soon as  decisions above have been made
Contact all the support people, start checks	As soon as  decisions above have been made
If you can choose a charity in advance, start work on it now.	As soon as  decisions above have been made
Contact your charity and start negotiating how you might work with them.	As soon as you have chosen your charity.
Get out information about the workshop.	As soon as  decisions above have been made
Clarify tasks for support workers	Four months before workshop
Plan the logistics of the day, including organising space.	One month before workshop
Plan the activities of the day.	Three to four weeks before workshop.
Arrange meals and drinks breaks for support workers	Three weeks before workshop
Contact support workers. Go over plans again.  Let them know car-parking arrangements etc.	Two weeks before workshop
WORKSHOP	Get in early that day!
Contact the support workers and thank them.	One week after workshop.
Make sure that work is finished and edited.	Six weeks after workshop
Upload the book to a printer.	Seven weeks after workshop
Market and sell the book.	Start immediately after workshop
Have a book launch	Ten weeks after workshop. (You can often get the book delivered within ten days of uploading it, but this allows for any mistakes that need rectifying)
Evaluate the whole workshop and decide whether to do it again. Consider any changes you might make.	Eleven weeks after workshop.
Extend the life of the book.	Ongoing