Always on
This project successfully funded on 1st November 2023, you can still support them with a donation.
Support our story
Rotherham, South Yorkshire, United Kingdom
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Aim
Help Grimm & Co raise funds for the creative activities we deliver to children & young people and be part of the next chapter of our story.
Who we are?
Grimm & Co is a Yorkshire literacy charity with a mission to change lives, one story at a time.
We provide exciting writing workshops to children and young people, from birth to age 18, unleashing imaginations through the joyful discovery of stories. Our creative writing workshops for ages 7+ cover lots of different types of writing, from comedy writing and stories, to poems, plays and monologues. Our family workshops for 0-6 year olds focus on sensory play, stories and language development.
Every child who comes through our doors does so for free. We have never charged children to join our after school clubs, holiday projects or writing workshops.
We want to ensure that children who need us the most will always be able to take part in free activities and creative writing programmes, but we cannot run these fantastic workshops on goodwill and magic alone.
There's one very important person who helps to make the fairytale dream of Grimm & Co a reality. You! We need your help.
What are we doing?
Since we opened our doors in 2016, we have worked with over 29,000 children and young people, in school story-making sessions, out of school clubs and family learning sessions. We were quickly outgrowing our rented space and we needed to expand to reach the schools, families and communities who needed us the most.
In early 2020, thanks to funding from Arts Council England, we purchased a wonderful, gothic building in order to expand our offering, to be able to meet the demands of our communities. However, as we all know, the situation rapidly changed in March 2020, with a global pandemic and lockdowns, meaning that we were unable to proceed as we wanted to with the transformation of this project.
What happens now?
Three years on, after pop-ups in different places, and workshops being held in schools and community spaces across the region, we are incredibly close to being able to open our wonderful new space to the public. We invite you to be part of our brand new Emporium of Stories!
We have welcomed some amazing designers and creators to transform our space with us. Lumsden Design have created iconic spaces for international brands, museums and cultural attractions and we have been thrilled with their beautiful designs for the Emporium of Stories. Together with Codsteaks Ltd and Cronin, they have created an incredible, magical space that we can't wait to show you.
The Emporium of Stories will include three Writer’s Pad spaces, each with its own individual design and feeling. These will be accessed through secret doors, with an air of wonder and amazement.
The spaces can be used in many different ways, whether we are hosting a school for a story-making workshop, young families enjoying sensory play, a group of teenagers discussing the charity’s projects, a corporate breakfast event, or a spoken word poetry performance.
We will have a café, also known as The Feastery, with story-themed activities for young people to enjoy. Catch up with friends, relax with a good book, or simply have a moment of peace in this cozy, magical space.
Finally, we have our apothecary, an integral part of our charity. This is a shop for magical beings to buy their supplies, but humans are welcome too. We only ask that humans check out the side effects of our products, to avoid a case of squeaky bottom burps, unwarranted sarcasm or hairy eyeballs.
Not only is our apothecary a magical place for visitors and customers to enjoy, it is also a portal through which our children and young people can travel, suspending their disbelief and allowing their imaginations to run wild. Don't you all wish you could have visited this apothecary as a child?!
Why we need your help:
We need your help to be able to open with a bang and to continue providing our free creative writing workshops to raise confidence and self-esteem in our young people. Once open, we will be able to invite schools, young people, families and communities into our inclusive, welcoming spaces.
In the 2023/24 academic year, we plan to run a wide range of creative sessions, including:
- helping our 30 Saturday club members to find their voices and become published authors of their own novellas.
- welcoming over 3,300 school children to our new Emporium of Stories to create fun, exciting stories.
- supporting our Young Leader group in the development of their public speaking and creative wellbeing.
- reaching over 180 marginalised children and young people in our after school clubs.
- working with agencies such as Barnados and the Looked After Children team, providing support and positive creative experiences to disadvantaged young people.
This is in addition to the ongoing activities we will provide within the shop and café, in our family learning sessions, and at community outreach events throughout the year.
We aim to work with 4,000 children and young people during the coming year, but we need your support to be able to do so.
We are offering you the chance to get involved right from the beginning of this next chapter. There are some hugely exciting opportunities for you to be a part of our journey, and we'd love you to join us.
Everyone who donates to our project will have their name included with the greatest of thanks on our website and on the programme of events at our Grand Opening in February 2024.
Our rewards:
There are a wide range of rewards on offer, and we hope that something will catch your eye.
Potions:
Secret doors:
The Tree Root light and The Source of all Creativity:
The Beanstalk in Graham's office:
Mind Oiler and the Story cascade in the foyer:
Story stairs on the Giant's bookcase (these are the stairs from our old home - the new stairs will have new stories):
Parchment of Purification, for the toilet twinning reward:
A shot of the Emporium of Stories foyer artwork:
Two of the banners going in Cliffhanger Castle:
The map of Rotherham treasures:
Funding method
Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made