The Writing Workshop

The Writing Workshop runs after-school, school holidays events 2015 – 2016, on the internet and in-school creative writing workshops and activities for the kids and younger people. Published authors lead all of our courses. (Click on the links to learn more: after-school, school holiday, internet and in-school.) The Writing Workshop was founded in 2006 by multi-award-winning author Dr Bernard Cohen.

The Writing Workshop helps young writers build confidence,
take pride in work, develop creativity, improve literacy,
increase general braininess and also a lot of fun.

News: Bernard Cohen could be the inaugural winner with the Russell Prize for Humour Writing. The prize, priced at $10,000, was awarded to Bernard's latest novel for adults, The Antibiography of Robert F. Menzies. In order to promote more humour for the children in need of it, Bernard donated half his prize to your Play Therapy Unit at Westmead Children's Hospital along with the other half to Save the Children to back up their help children in immigration detention on Nauru. The winner was announced with the State Library of NSW on 25th June.

Statistics: TheWritingWorkshop's Tenth Year

Founded: May 2006. (Bernard Cohen ran the very first workshop within a small room at Annandale North Public School.) We ran our first holiday workshop at Sydney Olympic Park in October 2006.

Participants: Over 50,000 as of yet, aged from 5yrs old to school-leavers.

Pieces read: We've read more than 300,000 bits of imaginative writing by teenagers so far — surely that is a record!

Schools visited: We've worked in lots of schools, libraries and community settings (along with with home-schooled as well as other private groups), including in over twenty NSW DET Priority Schools*, in gifted and talented programs along with University of Western Sydney's Pathways to Dreaming (formerly Indigenous School Student Mentoring) Program. We love in regional NSW and have absolutely worked at schools in Taree, Dubbo, Moree, and through the entire Hunter Valley and Central Coast.

Teacher Professional Development: We love working together with teachers. We want to inspire you by sharing creative, innovative strategies to teaching writing across all writing genres and also firing the imagination and creativity. Expect immersive workshop settings - no lectures or Powerpoint involved. We've caused hundreds of teachers throughout New South Wales and provides professional development courses of instruction for infants, primary, high-school and specialist teachers. Our goal is always to provide you and/or your school with methods to make writing fun, exciting, engaging and valuable for both students and teachers.

News: The Writing Workshop is endorsed by BOSTES to offer QTC-Registered Professional Development for teachers.

bostes endorsed provider

Venues: Australia public holidays 2016, school holiday programs have Kids within the Park (at Sydney Olympic Park), Sydney's largest school holiday program. We run regular after-school programs in Annandale, East Lindfield, Haberfield, Leichhardt and Eastwood for a long time 1 to 12. Since 2013, we now have presented co-curricular creative writing courses at Knox Grammar School. Online programs around for younger people from seven yrs old.

Ratings: Parents, participants and teachers greatly approve. We rate consistently from the high 90s-100% for enjoyment, learning and satisfaction amongst participants. and three consecutive parent surveys rated us 100% for overall experience (conducted by Sydney Olympic Park Authority in 2012, 2013 and 2014).

Successes: Scroll around this page for news of prizes, scholarships and fabulous marks - but discussing a coaching college. We model creativity and imaginative processes. We never teach by rote therefore we think lecturing is nowhere close to useful like a hands-on workshop or perhaps a decent Socratic dialogue. We value it when parents say to us (as numerous, many have), "My child came home from a workshop and easily kept writing." We want emailing be fun, relevant, empowering and useful.

Staff: All workshop leaders are published, freelance writers. Workshop leaders include or have included Dr Bernard Cohen; Emily Maguire; Dr Ed Wright; Matt Buchanan; Brent Clough. We also operate a peer leaders program for experienced participants in class year 9 and above - the aim is always to provide useful and interesting work experience for that high-school-aged peer leaders as well as for them to work as role models for primary school participants.

We support: the Leukaemia Foundation (including via Bernard Cohen's annual headshave), the Children's Hospital at Westmead; plus the Cambodian Children's Trust.

We sponsor: Sydney Youth Writing Competition; The Whitlam Institute's "What Matters?" writing competition; and school fundraisers at our after-school venues.

Summer 2015-16 holidays creative writing workshops - Now Booking

This coming holidays, Bernard Cohen and Ed Wright will conduct seventeen different workshops for a long time five to fifteen, including specialist workshops for dramatic writing, fantasy and mystery, non-fiction (advocacy and persuasion) and selective schools test prep together with the regular fun and educational workshops.

Our holiday workshops take place inside Field Studies Tower in the Education Centre Tower in Bicentennial Park, Homebush Bay (within Sydney Olympic Park) in Sydney's largest school holiday program, Kids inside Park. Free parking is available in the venue (Carpark P10f).

You may find school holiday creative writing workshops suitable for a long time 6-15 along with all skill-sets. We're pleased with our record in switching previously reluctant children into the pleasures of writing as well as in helping ambitious young writers fulfil their literary ambitions. Please join our list to keep informed with the latest course information.

News: The Writing Workshop receives 100% satisfaction rating. According to the latest survey conducted by Sydney Olympic Park Authority (July 2014), 100 per-cent of respondents were satisfied overall with The Writing Workshop course the youngster attended inside July 2014 school holiday program at Sydney Olympic Park. Read comments from previous survey respondents.

News: Congratulations to Brendon on winning recent years 5-6 section with the 2014 University of Western Sydney Whitlam Institute "What Matters?" essay competition. Brendon attended after-school workshops from kindergarten to year 4. Read his amazing piece here. For more details visit on atarscorecalculatorscore.net.