Reflections on Day 1

Monday 20th July marked the first day of SWIFT 2015.  It was wonderful to welcome our colleagues from across the sector and across the country.  We began with some icebreakers and some opportunities to find out who was in the room.  This was followed by an input inspired by our absent friends from the Bay Area Writing Project (BAWP) - Berkeley -  Kristen and Greta.  The exercise is called 'Foods from my childhood' and the co-director of SWIFT 2015, Deirdre, very gentled urged the group to list foods they remembered, to talk about them with a partner, to steal good ideas, to develop a couple of items from the list and finally to write about one of the foods that mattered most.  We read these to our partners and some brave participants (Orlagh and Neil) shared their ideas with the group.

The morning continued with the first of our demos, this one from Martina.  Martina spoke of the great work which she has done in St Aidan's in Tallaght on the Make a Book project and she set us all up to write a picture book about a pet.  The results were collaborative efforts which amused all.

After lunch, two of last year's Fellows (Ferdia and Christina) returned to Maynooth to work with us on screenplay writing.  These presenters challenged us with the form of screenplay writing and prompted us to consider how we might integrate either the method or the essence of this type of writing into our own curricula.

We finished the day with Mairead volunteering to provide the daily log which she presented this morning - Tuesday.  She told us that she found yesterday helped her to feel inspired and confident; that she enjoyed the 'pure and distilled form of writing' of screen play.  She finished by boldly articulating that 'Maybe I am a writer'!