As part of an exciting initiative young people from Yate Library linked up with groups from Nelson Library in New Zealand and Goolwa Library in South Australia to write a story in 2 hours. At the stroke of 7:30am on Wednesday (8:30 pm in New Zealand and 4:00 pm in Australia) the young people eagerly opened the envelope which provided the opening sentence of a story. Each group then had 30 minutes to write the first part of a story before sending it on to the other groups to be continued before finally completing the story which had already had contributions from the two other countries. The group not only had very strict time limits but were required to include illustrations and props.
"This was a really exciting project" said Martin Burton, library, arts and information manager. "The young people rose to the challenge magnificently. Not only did they have to get up early in their holidays but they worked together as a team to produce their part of the story under a great deal of pressure".
The other library authorities were equally impressed "It was great to work together with Nelson in New Zealand and Yate in the UK". Linking together across the world in this way showed that young people share the same passion for stories and writing and we look forward to future joint working on other projects", said Jill Patmore, head of libraries in Alexandrina in South Australia.
Jo Paige, one of the young people in Yate Library said "I found the morning interesting and enjoyable. It's different to anything else I've ever done and it was cool to interact with people from the other side of the world".