New UCL East Saturday Club develops young people's creative skills

Running every Saturday during school term time, the club hosts pupils at UCL East’s Marshgate from schools across east London. Sessions are delivered at by UCL departments and staff, providing young people the valuable opportunity to develop wide-ranging skills under the overarching theme of ‘writing and talking’.

Since opening its doors in November, the UCL East Saturday Club has held sessions exploring mythology and performance with staff from the Creative Arts and Humanities BA programme. This term members are delving into UCL’s archives to play with poetry in sessions supported by UCL Library Special Collections, while forthcoming weekends will see the group get to grips with film language and visual storytelling with staff from our Media BA programme, as well as sessions with the IOE’s English PGCE students and UCL’s Student Storytellers in the summer.

The Writing and Talking club builds on the success of previous clubs from the UCL East Schools Engagement team, which focused on Film and Screen and Art and Design, with even more UCL departments and programmes involved in the activity, which in turn has a positive impact on young people in east London.

Tutor Sophia Sakellaridis Mangoura from the Creative Arts and Humanities BA said: ‘I think we emboldened the students to ask questions and dream big for the future. We created an environment of collaborative learning and curiosity’. Co-tutor Chan Du added: ‘The students were able to notice good things about the writing of their peers and articulate them. I was especially impressed by how open and brave they were in talking and writing.’

A student assistant, provides support to the club and continuity for the students participating throughout the year’s programme. Geneva Virasami, a Public History MA student at UCL, returned to the club as assistant this year, and said: ‘Our participants inspire me every week; applying what they've learned about Greek mythology to their performances as choruses, exploring our special collections poetry and writing their own. I'm excited to continue seeing the cogs turn as we introduce new concepts and feel so privileged to witness their incredible creative outputs!’.

The UCL East Saturday Club is part of a national programme run by the National Saturday Club, which coordinates activities, including a central London cultural visit, this year to the British Library; a trip to UCL’s Bloomsbury campus; and a welcome session for all clubs at Central St Martins. It culminates in July in central London with a graduation ceremony and summer show, where work from more than 100 clubs will be on display.