A West Dorset charity is nurturing children’s imagination, growing their interest in writing, then publishing their stories and poems
Nick Goldsmith is all about empowering the child. ‘When you don’t guide them, that’s when you get the magic,’ he enthuses. He’s talking about the charity he founded in 2021, The Bank of Dreams and Nightmares, which provides free creative writing workshops for primary and secondary schools across Dorset. We’re sitting in the bright atrium of a funky shared office space in Bridport which, behind a modest basement door, turns out to house human rights lawyers, commercial bakers and a crowd-funder.
Having originally studied graphic design at Central St Martins, Goldsmith is charmingly modest about his CV. It includes producing music videos for bands like Blur, Fatboy Slim and Pulp; the Hollywood version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and critically acclaimed British film, Son of Rambow. Set in the 1980s, the film is about two young misfits who bond over making a film with a home-video camera. It’s quirky, emotionally intelligent, very funny, and I suspect contains much of the essence of Goldsmith’s own character.
For instance, when talking about drawing he says he was struck by the idea that ‘everyone can draw until at some point someone says, no. That’s not right, and at that point you suddenly can’t?’ And it’s this principle that he’s applied to his writing workshops. ‘When we go into schools, the first thing we say is, “We’re not school and we don’t care about grammar, punctuation or any of those things. We’re interested in stories and imagination.” For me, it’s a tragedy that when we ask what makes a good story, the first things the kids say are ‘punctuation and paragraphs.’ He grins. ‘Just like it’s weird that they always come up with characters called Bob and Jeff.’
Goldsmith had been thinking about setting up a writing charity for seven years; ever since he stumbled across a pirate supply store at 826 Valencia Street in San Francisco which, upon passing through a secret door, turned out to be the front for a creative writing workshop - 826 Valencia, a charity dedicated to supporting under-resourced students ages six to 18 with their creative writing skills. ‘It was founded in 2008 by the American author, Dave Eggers. Now there are about 40 of these creative writing workshops across the world, including eight in the UK and Ireland. We all follow a similar format and we’re meeting in Edinburgh later this year to swap ideas.’
It’s an illustrious cast of founders. In London, Nick Hornby set up The Ministry of Stories, and Roddy Doyle did the same in Ireland with Fighting Words. ‘Something that made me really interested was Roddy’s statement that if you just allow children to go with their imagination, and not try and impose rules or restrictions on them, they shine; and they really do.’
It was two things that prompted Goldsmith to turn his long-held dream into a reality. The first was being grounded by lockdown (prior to this he had been working around the world on TV commercials); the other was that his mother sadly passed away. ‘This left me enough money to create the breathing space of not needing to work while setting everything up for The Bank of Dreams and Nightmares,’ he explains. ‘I knew it would make her proud and it was my way of honouring her.’
However, he still needed to raise considerable start-up funding. He did this by calling on everyone he’d ever worked with, who responded with generous enthusiasm. ‘As part of the fundraising campaign, Nick Hornby became one of the Bank’s first clients - he wrote me a quote, calling us “the only Bank with any interest” - and the Roald Dahl Estate kindly let me have the BFG (Big Friendly Giant) as a customer.’
There are currently two main strands to the charity’s work; both involve reaching out to children who wouldn’t normally have the access to such things. The first is one-off morning workshops with primary schools, where the children (seven to 11-year-olds) collaborate to come up with a story ending on a cliff-hanger. This is then printed as a high-quality booklet and delivered to the school the next day; hopefully to be finished off by the budding young writers. There is also an illustrator who works alongside them (either in the room or on Zoom); a ‘responsible’ adult, whose job it is to bop children on the head with a blow-up banana should they peek during the secret voting process; and the mysterious ‘Bank Manager’.
Goldsmith’s delight in the latter is clear as he bounds up the stairs to fetch a bright red rotary phone. ‘This is what the Bank Manager phones in on,’ he says, picking up the receiver to demonstrate. ‘He or she is always very grumpy and doesn’t believe that children can write stories. Some of the children want to yell, protesting that they can. Others hold back. But it’s amazing how, by the end of the session, every kid in the room wants to read the Bank Manager their story.’
With secondary schools, Goldsmith and his growing team of volunteers work with around 20 hand-picked students over a period of weeks, or even months, to either create podcasts or produce a printed book of stories. Regarding the latter, Goldsmith explains that there are just two criterium: ‘We’re allocated a decent amount of time to create really good work, and from it we produce a product that’s good enough to sell in bookshops. The latter is important, and the production values are high – for instance, a professionally illustrated front cover, and a foreword by a well-known author.’ Max Porter (author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers) wrote the forward for the first book of stories they produced.
So far, the books have had an overall theme. The first two being I Have a Dream and Spiralling, A Slow Descent into Madness. ‘I was surprised by how dark a place the kids took the first book,’ adds Goldsmith. ‘So, with the second, we chose the theme of ‘eerie’.’
Coming up later this year is a workshop based around Food, Glorious Food. And, due to be published on May 4, A Guidebook to Weymouth written by students of Budmouth Academy. ‘It’s a celebration of Weymouth, as seen through the eyes of the students who live there, full of stories, maps and whatever else they come up with,’ Goldsmith grins.
A key step on the ever-lengthening ladder of Goldsmith’s ambitions is to find a permanent roost for the charity: ‘This would mean that we can become more visible and accessible to everyone. We also run an after-school newspaper club called The Vault. They produce What’s Going On? a quarterly newspaper which you can subscribe to.’ The next edition is out on April 1, all money raised from selling their publications goes towards more creative writing courses in the area. ‘And the free holiday sessions we started last summer were incredibly popular, so we really do need somewhere here in Dorset as a permanent base.’
Goldsmith has had his eye on the former Barclays Bank building in Bridport, and plans are underway for a crowd-funding campaign to purchase it. ‘After all, banks are what gave me the original idea for the charity’s name,’ he adds. ‘It’s even got all the old vaults. I want to create an unnecessarily beautiful place for young minds on fire. If you create such a space, it will inspire kids to want to do creative stuff.’
High ideals indeed, but not surprising for a man whose work has always involved both creating and selling dreams. ‘The thing that excites me most are the as yet unformulated projects; there are always ideas on the boil,’ he enthuses, and promptly reels off what’s currently bubbling away. ‘We’ve got Sketch Comedy Writing coming up, in conjunction with the BBC; there’s a song writing workshop called The Song Bank, plus an exhibition of photos and poems. And one of our sister charities just produced an opera. Everything we do is about celebrating kids’ ideas. It’s the enthusiasm they all show, along with our team of wonderful volunteers, that allows us to do this.
‘However, we’re a charity with a strong remit, so I’m also keen to evaluate and demonstrate the impact of our work. To bottle, in report form, the palpable sense of pride you feel in the room at our book launches; often emanating from schoolkids who’ve previously completely disengaged from education. Because if you show a child that you appreciate and believe in what they can do, it can be transformative.’
Having seen the delighted faces of the children from Beaminster School at the book launch for I Have a Dream, each clutching a copy of their book which, according to one of them, ‘contains a little bit of everyone’s worlds, all in one’, I have to agree with both Goldsmith and the words of the BFG: ‘There is dream jars in every crook and nanny of my cave so I is packing up my splendid phizwizzards and frightsome trogglehumpers and bringing them to the bank of dreams and nightmares.’
According to Goldsmith, every story deposited in the Bank of Dreams and Nightmares earns interest. ‘Like any good bank we'll help your instalment grow and grow. We'll give it eyes and ears to see and hear it, words to appreciate it and applause to motivate it on. So, believe in what's in your head, believe in what you can create, believe in your dreams and nightmares.’
Nick Goldsmith and his team are looking for volunteer story mentors and illustrators to work on short or long-term projects. Find information on this, or to take out a subscription for What’s Going On? (£3.99 per quarter), or buy any of their publications go to thebankofdreamsandnightmares.org
My Dream to become a Muddy Puddle
by Harry - Taken from I Have a Dream
Ever since I was two years
old I’ve wanted to become
a muddy puddle. Mummy
always says, ‘Peppa, everyone
knows that’s only a myth!’
Despite that, I’ve never
stopped believing. One day, I
will become a muddy puddle!
I always look outside and it’s
raining.
‘Can I be a muddle puddle?’ I
ask to Daddy:
‘No, it’s not possible.’
'I’ll find the instructions to
become a muddy puddle.’
‘The instructions don’t exist.’
Despite that, I never
stopped believing. One day,
instead, I will become a
dinosaur!
I always walk into the
museum with George, and I
look inside the dinosaur room.
‘Dinasaur, rurr,’ George
would say.
With one word, I became a
muddy dinosaur! My dreams
came true, I became a muddy
puddle and a dinosaur!
And I regret that wish every day!
