Booklover Kissley reports: “Most birthdays friends and family give me books because they know I love to read. I also get a lot of ugly jewellery. This year I really didn’t want any gifts–a cake, yes, but I’m trying to cut down on acquiring ‘stuff’ that ends up gathering dust under my bed.

In keeping with my love for all things literary including the Ministry and 826 Seattle (my hometown) I sent the below email. I hope you good people consider doing the same for your birthday.

Subject: Literary Birthday

Dear Friends and Family

Y’all know I love reading, writing, and books. In celebration of my birthday this weekend, please consider:

1. Donating to the Ministry of Stories

2. Donating to 826 Seattle

3. Taking a walk and donating those books gathering dust on your shelves to your local charity bookshop

4. Swapping books with your homies

5. Staying in bed all day and reading a book (can be paired with #10)

6. Writing a nice letter to your mom

7. Writing me an email about your favourite book or writer (at the moment, mine is Jonathan Franzen)

8. Reading the funny stuff on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

9. Reading something you wrote as a child

10. Eating cake (see #5)

Thank you and I hope you all have a great weekend. I’ll be spending my birthday doing all of the above (and a lot of #10).

Love from London, Kissley”

Javier writes: “I first heard about MoS through work (UBS). I instantly loved the MoS idea as I prefer projects that are about unleashing potential within people. Creativity and imagination should be in the base of every kid’s education. Improving communication and literacy skills will give them a better chance in the future.

First step to get involved was doing the training for writing mentoring. Then as our 5th wedding anniversary drew close, my other half and I decided to support MoS by organizing a party at home for around 60 friends.

MoS provided fundraising buckets and leaflets. We hung big red Chinese lanterns in the patio really high, they looked amazing at night. Our living room turned into Disco, with a DJ and the ceiling full of white LED helium balloons, Spanish/Argentinean food and wine and a magician going round playing tricks! The goods we brought from the Monster Supplies Shop were really popular. Needless to say we all had a ball, and also collected quite a bit of money which grew nicely with the help of UBS matching scheme!

I also joined the 159 Club. I strongly encourage you to join as well and to volunteer with MoS. Unleash your inner monster, find your inner child.”

We are pleased and proud to be part of Kissley and Javier’s celebrations, and very grateful for their donations. Could you find a fun way of raising money for the Ministry of Stories? Email us with your ideas and we’ll be pleased as punch to help.

As luck would have it our artistic friends were on hand to help. Drawing inspiration from our ghastly goods, a batch of gruesomely good posters were spawned and are being shown on rotation at Hoxton Street Monster Supplies.

Don’t miss the first batch of our monstrous masterpieces. Pay us a visit, ogle and pick up a terribly tasty treat too. We’re open 1-5pm Tuesday to Saturday.

Minature Eyeballs by Joely Brammer

Moonlight by Rebecca Buckland

Zombie Fresh Mints by Maggie Li

Thickest Human Snot by Alice Lickens

Old-fashioned Brain Jam by Frann Preston-Gannon

Thickest Human Snot by Krina Patel

A Vague Sense Of Unease by  Tim Smith

We would like to thank you all for  your hard work and inspiration. If you’re a designer and would like to get involved with design projects at Hoxton Street Monster Supplies or the Ministry of Stories, please send your portfolio to shop@ministryofstories.org

The list of over 80 favourites makes for good recommended reading in itself, and our Story Ministers have pored over it to pick their Tip Top Top Ten favourites. These lucky book lovers will be invited for a special visit to the Ministry of Stories, to celebrate what happens when good books and good people come together.

Our favourite Favourites are:

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer
donated by Rebekah Smith
As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner
donated by Seanetta Alisass
Beloved, by Toni Morrison
donated by Shelley Alexander
A Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
donated by Maurice
The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein
donated by James Huggins
Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons
donated by Laura Greenfield
Over Sea, Under Stone, by Susan Cooper
donated by Jack Thorne
Neverending Story, by Michael Ende
donated by Nicole Mezzasalma
The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
donated by Hamish Moseley
The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver
donated by Caroline Windsor

For the full list of favourites, please visit the MoS Favourites Fund page. Our thanks to everyone who gave the cost of their favourite book and made such a difference. If you’d like to give regularly to the Ministry of Stories, and help us work with even more young people in our 2nd year, why not join the 159 Club?

After fleeing her hometown of Bristol to complete a degree in illustration up in Manchester, Ruth moved to London late last year where she quickly settled down the road in Hackney Central. Having displayed a slightly unnerving love for all things beastly, mutant and generally troglodyte from an early age (she was already producing manuals on The Guide to Surviving Monsters before she left the West Country), it did not take her very long to sniff out the Ministry. Completing her training in September she promptly threw herself into mentoring twice a week and manning the Hoxton Street Monster Supplies store fortnightly. (Though the Chief suspects this latter commitment may well have something to do with her worrying fascination with the Guts and Garlic Chutney).

Supplementing her volunteering with some outlandish performances on the till down at the St.Paul’s branch of Paperchase, Ruth has also established herself as one of our most outstanding illustrators, animating many of the Senior Cabinet’s favourite protagonists (including, amongst others, the abominable Frank the Chef – who has twenty-five eyes, vampire teeth, pink fluffy hair and surreptitiously hangs ladies’ arms and fingers on a washing line at the back of his kitchen). Besides producing exquisitely crafted maps and mini-portraits of various underachieving footballers (largely of the Tottenham variety) in her spare time, Ruth can also be found marauding the capital’s parks in search of wayward canines to sketch (evidenced above) and involving herself with different community-arts initiatives. She is a rarity in this day and age by virtue of the fact she has no interest in churning out art for profit and we are just thankful that we have been the beneficiaries of that decision.

Whilst Ruth may well have the hand of a wizard, lest we forget that what essentially makes her such a deserving choice for Minister of the Month is her willingness and ability to connect with the child inside her. All in all, that’s what being a great Minister comes down to. So remember, my little darlings, it doesn’t matter whether you are a Turner prize winner or a Booker nominee – the Chief wants minions with big hearts and open minds. With that in mind, whatever your background, whatever your profession, if you are interested in volunteering (and besides mentoring, there are plenty of other ways you can help us out) then just email Rich or Ben at volunteers@ministryofstories.org.

Complete with a collection of some of the most exciting artisans this side of the Channel – including the novelist Evie Wyld, poet Jack Underwood and award-winning animator Tom Humberstone – we offer you an evening of creative frivolity, over-flowing with literary performance and live illustration.

Supported by an equally distinguished cast of live musical guests (so special they can’t be named for fear of mass overcrowding), this all comes at the astonishingly disproportionate price of £7 (£5 for MoS volunteers). And if that weren’t worthy enticement enough, know this; every penny of this festive fundraiser goes towards inspiring young people to transform their lives through writing.

To find out more head to the facebook event and/or www.yarnfest.com/

Buy advance tickets here

We hope to see you there!

The site is ALIVE! at www.monstersupplies.org

I did my Ministry training way back in March. And then, ignoring all advice to sign up for a session as soon as possible, let it sit for six months before finally putting my name down to mentor at one of the Thursday Write For A Bright Future drop-in workshops. Now they are fun – sitting at a table while a procession of excited youngsters traipse through after school and basically spew out everything that’s in their head; either onto the page or into my ear.

It was after one of these sessions that shady figures from the upper echelons of the Minstry sidled up to me. They’d heard that I wrote for EastEnders. They were planning a four week soap writing course, initially for a local school, but hopefully something they could roll out more widely in the new year. Was I interested? In what, I asked? Mentoring on it? In devising it. And teaching it.

Next thing I knew we were running the first session of the workshop. Not for the school, but for a room full of mentors. We watched clips from E20, we talked about our favourite soap characters, and we found out why Alf in Home & Away never gets any good stories. We had a ball. But we were meant to get through our character workshop in two hours, and we were having so much fun that we were very quickly running out of time. And thus I began to fret. If we were struggling for time with a group of focused and well-behaved adult mentors, how on earth were we going to manage with a room of 20-odd highly-excitable 14 year-old girls?

Well, we managed fine. The first session was last Tuesday and though the girls were indeed excitable, often ear-splittingly loud, and only occasionally hysterical, they were wonderful. Because the hysteria was for all the right reasons. They had great ideas about what they wanted to see on telly, they had firm (and borderline fanatical) opinions about their favourite EastEnders characters, and they identified the light and shade in EastEnders and E20 bad girl Faith Olubumni from just a few short clips. Brilliant stuff.

The highlight was when our mentors helped the kids realise that a soap doesn’t need gang violence and rampant drug trafficking to be exciting. The look on the kids’ faces when they realised that their own lives – the lives of 14 year-old girls at a Whitechapel school – could actually be a soap opera, was amazing. In that moment soap opera went from something written by other people about another world, to something that was utterly within their reach. It was exciting.

So the next few weeks of the workshop are going to be a LOT of fun. We’re going to learn how to write scenes, how to build to a cliffhanger, and how to tell stories. And eventually we’re going to be creating and writing our own soap, provisionally entitled either Whitechapel or E1. If this sounds outrageously ambitious, well, it probably is. But with the enthusiasm and talent of these kids and a calm and occasional firm mentoring hand to keep them on the rails, we’ll get there.

The evening is in aid of, and inspired by, ‘The Awfully Bad Guide to Monster Housekeeping’, a collection of ghoulish poetry created by local children in workshops we held at the Ministry of Stories in June. All funds raised from ticket sales will go towards the publication of the professionally-finished edition of this collection – launched this October – and each writing game will be directly related to a chapter of the guide.

***THE ACTS***

PolarBear – The blizzard of street spoken word that is PolarBear will be giving you a taste of his home-stirred Brummie love as he articulates his way through cups of tea and cosy jumpers, fresh from helping our young ones at the Ministry create their monster poetry.

The Great Brain Robbery – Five-piece comedy ensemble The Great Brain Robbery provide a segment cerebrally stolen from their latest success at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Hold on to your craniums!

Kami Thompson - Startling singer/songwriter Kami Thompson will be filling the air with her ‘beautiful and understated’ arias, giving a sneak peak of her debut album ‘Love Lies’ which will be released this October, and giving you all break from your scrambled minds!

***THE GAME***

The night will involve a writing game which will be themed around ‘The Awfully Bad Guide to Monster Housekeeping’. Each round will explore one of the four chapters, and will entail multiple creative tasks to challenge you to think like children.  The game will be judged by literary heroes who know their way around a tongue twister or two, all of which led poetry workshops that led to the creation of the poetry collection.

***THE JUDGES***

Laura Dockrill

PolarBear

Naomi Woddis

The judging panel is home to three of the blistering poets who helped shape the original ‘Awfully Bad’ poetry collection – how will your writing be received in comparison?

And finally …

Remember! Much like you don’t have to be a teacher to mentor kids at the Ministry, you don’t need to be a writer to excel at this night of wonder and mischief. It’s just about having a little scribble!

If you have any questions about the event, please email Rich at volunteers@ministryofstories.org, and he’ll endeavour to reveal more …

Monday 26th September @ Concrete under Pizza East

Doors: 7.30pm

Tickets £7 / £5 (for MoS volunteers)

Get your tickets by clicking HERE!

Despite spending time at publishers Random House, Egmont and literacy charity the Book Trust, Harpreet’s application for a job at the Reading Agency wasn’t successful. She explains that mentoring three times a week gave her a much needed boost of energy and a that focus kept her going while scouring the barren plateau of London jobs.

Harpreet’s commitment to writing mentoring led her further into the creative tunnels of the Ministry. She asked for more responsibility: we gave her fundraising applications, fundraising research as well as asking her to help lead the Newsbreakers’ Hoxton A.M. project. It turns out Harpeet’s got quite a knack for shouting ‘extra! extra!’ and said that selling the paper on the market with the kids was the funnest thing she did at the Ministry. The research she completed ensured an impressive turn-out for a fundraising event we held in early summer and taught her the basics in the delicate and sticky business of asking people for money.

Harpreet has also got her hands dirty in the equally delicate and unnavigable operation of neighbourhood interaction. The Ministry works hard to communicate with the local residents of Hoxton, and Harpreet’s been on the frontline speaking to tenant management organisations in the local estates to encourage their tenants to get involved with all the activities behind the Monster Shop.

All this hard work hasn’t gone unnoticed, a few weeks ago, Harpreet had another interview for a job at the Reading Agency, and guess what? She got it. Harpreet also mentions that the Ministry has helped her think about other jobs she’d enjoy, such as teaching assisting and youth project work, and she’s planning on gaining further training in youth work regardless.

But hold on a jiffy! This isn’t about what the Ministry’s done for Harpreet, it’s about what Harpreet’s done for the Ministry! And from one minister to another, I can tell you it’s her radiant smile, all round willingness and sparkling amiability that makes her a juicy and ripe candidate for August’s Minister of the Month. Hurrah!

If you need somewhere to focus your energies, message Rich at volunteers@ministryofstories.org to find out how you might get involved.

For the past year, we have had the help and dedication of J. Nathan Matias. Nathan has spent the past few years working with new technology startups and various projects within charities, literature and the arts. Nathan came to us early on thanks to an introduction via the Sainsbury Family Trusts. The fact that the Ministry teaches through fun resonated with the lessons his parents taught him growing up “the best parts of learning aren’t found in memorisation or test scores, but in creativity.”

Though Nathan is leaving us to start his graduate studies at the MIT Media Lab, he still plans on continuing the spirit of MoS “For my first project, I plan to look at ways that software may help charity startups like the MoS organise volunteers during the first few months of figuring out their mission and services. I can’t wait to start!”

We are very sorry to see Nathan go but we are sure we will keep in touch with him and we haven’t been left completely high and dry.

When we were told about Nathan’s departure, we put out word that we were looking for help and you responded. We have been lucky enough to enlist three new tech volunteers to help us keep going and growing.

Tony Ports was the first to join us back in March. Tony was “a frustrated pop star [who] fell into the IT industry at the tender age of 16, simply wanting to raise some cash for a synthesiser.” When Tony’s dream of fame did not materialise, he decided to continue in IT and has worked for organisations such as Readers Digest, Guardian News and Media, and News International.Tony had been following us for a while and after some gentle nudging from an author friend, Tony applied to be a technical advisor and we couldn’t be happier “Meeting everyone at the Ministry has been a delight, and they’re all so very enthusiastic, which is infectious.”

Recently, Tony has acquired a taste for travelling and has seen many places from Rio to Moscow. Helping the Ministry hasn’t clipped his wings though and he is still ticking off the countries on his list.

Barry Irvine is our second volunteer in our trusted trio. Barry has worked in the IT industry for many years and has spent the last decade living and working in the Netherlands. This hard-working, Dutch speaking Brit took a belated gap year recently and had some exciting adventures including climbing Kilimanjaro, working with lions in Zimbabwe and travelling the length of South America (you can read about his travels here). After so many adventures, Barry has decided to settle in the UK and has been exploring the world of Android applications, releasing his own downloadable game. But when Barry heard that we were looking for help, he did not hesitate to get in touch “I’ve always had a great interest in writing and have made a few attempts at writing a novel so when my girlfriend told me that there were some vacant technical roles at the MoS I leapt at the chance. Not only would I be helping others nurture their creative skills but I’d be leveraging my existing skills.”

And last, but by no way least, is Mark Simpkins. Mark has been working in the internet industry for the last 15 years at agencies and startups alike and spent almost nine years at the BBC. When not working, Mark dedicates a lot of time to charities and volunteering. He helped create two conferences, Geekyoto and Africa Gathering, and continues to be involved. Mark had been following us from the very start but decided to get involved after seeing us at The Story 2011 in February. And when we put out a call in June for someone with his expertise, he jumped at the chance “I am passionate about sharing the creation of media, making the skills and tools available to all as a way of creating a mature, pluralistic, inclusive and creative society. Being able to help, in some small way, the Ministry Of Stories deliver and nurture a passion for imaginative and creative writing is an exciting challenge for me.”

We just want to say welcome and thank you to the new team and we look forward to the journey ahead of us.
The Ministry of Stories would not be possible without the time and dedication of such wonderful volunteers. If their stories have inspired you to get involved, please email: volunteers@ministryofstories.org. We don’t just need technically minded people, we still need mentors, illustrators, shop vendors and much more so please, get in touch.