About the MoS

The Ministry of Stories is a creative writing and mentoring centre for young people in east London. We use storytelling to inspire young people aged 8-18, in the belief that writing unleashes their imaginations and builds confidence, self-respect and communication.

Nick Hornby, Lucy Macnab and Ben Payne founded the Ministry of Stories in 2010. In its first year, over 3000 young people took part in our volunteer-led workshops and writing projects. Our inspiration came from the writer Dave Eggers and educator Ninive Calegari, who opened a shop for pirates and writing centre called 826 Valencia in San Francisco.

To find us, you'll need to go through Hoxton Street Monster Supplies, Purveyor of Quality Goods for Monsters of Every Kind...

For more details about the Ministry, read our FAQs.

To see some of the amazing people involved in the Ministry, click here.

What are
we here for?

The Ministry of Stories was founded by Nick Hornby and co-directors Lucy Macnab and Ben Payne. Hidden away at the back of The Monster Shop (where else would you expect it?), the Ministry of Stories provides a free space for fresh writing by young people. Here in Hoxton we provide workshops and one-to-one mentoring. The services are provided by volunteers: local writers, artists and teachers, all giving their time and talent for free.

The MoS is inspired by young people, and aims to inspire them to transform their lives through writing. We work closely with schools, supporting the work of teachers, but our great benefit is that we provide one-to-one mentoring for young people to enjoy imaginative stories, improve language skills, increase abilities in communication, add to social and educational confidence.

Welcome to the
Ministry of Stories

We are an organisation dedicated to the creation of stories by a new storytelling generation.
Fire your imagination, have a look around and get involved.

Dispatches from The Ministry

Intelligence Gathering

Inspiring a nation of storytellers takes a lot of work and we couldn’t do this without the passion and enthusiasm shown by our troops of dedicated volunteers.

Your hard work doesn’t go unnoticed here and, to say thank you for your recent efforts, we invite you to our upcoming event Intelligence Gathering.

Salt from Tears

Greetings Ministers! Looks like those giddy kippers at Hoxton Street Monster Supplies have been at it again. Seems they’ve developed a rather novel technique to extract tears from humans suffering in various emotional states and from some curious physical conditions.

The Ministry
Weblog

What's on our mind as we go about our storytelling business.

MoS Experts Aid Digestion

Preparing a feast, creating a menu or wondering what to feed a Plerpin?
Luckily for you, this week our MoS Experts are advising on matters of the tum!

MoS Experts Keep Creativity Flowing

Our MoS experts are residents of Hackney and are aged between 8-13. Every Saturday they donate their time to providing premium advice and inspiring ideas to help you banish boredom. This week our experts are tackling the age old problem of ‘creative fatigue’.

A Nation of Storytellers

Enjoy some of the amazing stories that are flying out of the Ministry.

Death Will Be With You

Once there was a bloodsucking creature called Destiny. The Chief of the Vampires was called Dean.

He was massive and mean and he was allergic to garlic.

Shattered Dreams

Once upon a time there was a miniscule vegetarian fairy called Plum. Her greatest fear was meat. Plum was a very intelligent young fairy. She was sweet and kind and didn’t make mistakes that often. She was never badly behaved.