If you visit the Get Involved section of our website, you’ll find out that Barnsley Young Writers (BYW) is a key local resource for young people passionate about creative writing. You’ll also find out that they meet every two weeks, and that the group offers creative writing workshops and opportunities for 14 to 19-year-olds from across Barnsley. The group is part of Hive Young Writers Network who work with partners to offer groups and writing-related development support for young people across South Yorkshire and the nearby North.
Barnsley Young Writers provides a safe and supportive space for young people to develop their creative interests, whoever they are, with professional guidance. The group welcomes everyone, from hobbyist to career interests, from neurodivergent thinkers to those identifying as LGBTQIA+. Participants explore poetry, short stories and playwriting, and are encouraged to get involved in wider opportunities such as submitting their work for publication, performing at events and entering national competitions.
Sounds good, right? Like the kind of thing you wish you’d had when you were young? Yes, we agree. Which is why it’s now a cornerstone of our creative programme and why we wanted to use this month’s In Focus to shine a light on all things Barnsley Young Writers.
My name is Jason and I’m the Community Engagement Manager at Barnsley Civic. Barnsley Young Writers has been part of the Civic’s community engagement programme since 2019, and a permanent part of our core programming since 2022.
The first Barnsley Young Writers was established in 2010, and in 2019, after a great collaboration with Vicky Morris, writer and founder of Hive Young Writers Network, I could see how special joining forces could be for local young people. Until then, I’d only glimpsed some of the magic of Hive’s work in Barnsley, through workshops at Horizon Community College and young person’s organisation Chilypep.
One of the first things that enthused Vicky and I when we got talking about this collaboration was the potential of using the Civic’s exhibitions to inspire writing around exciting and stimulating themes. Vicky had seen potential in our photography exhibition Visible Girls by Anita Corbin, and we organised a visit for young writers. Having once upon a time been a teen who loved to write, and who’d only just started my role as the Civic’s then Community Engagement Officer, I was excited by this prospect.
The Visible Girls collab was an instant success and we saw the potential in the regular Barnsley Young Writers group being based at the Civic, while giving Hive a hub in Barnsley. All Hive’s groups run in collaboration with supportive, public-facing partnerships, and this model is so powerful for linking cultural infrastructure up for young people across the region, where they can get to travel and see what’s going on in other towns.
In 2020, Barnsley Young Writers, now based at the Civic, responded to exhibitions including work by Mark Evans and Paula Chambers in powerful ways. It’s one thing to interact with exhibitions as audiences, it’s another to creatively respond. Both were a hit. Then, before you knew it, Covid landed and scuppered our plans!
Hive’s regional young writers’ groups, like everything else, found a new home on Zoom during the pandemic. It was good that creativity had somewhere to connect, but it wasn’t the same as the real world. After plenty of planning and securing enough budget to run for an initial six months, in February 2022, we relaunched Barnsley Young Writers at the Civic, once again lacing our exhibitions programme into great workshops. After promoting the sessions on socials and with local schools and colleges, our first session had a healthy 12 young people attend from across Barnsley. Following 18 months of lockdown, we found ourselves with young people who had been massively impacted by the pandemic; from anxiety in social settings to having never been on a bus or train alone, or outside of Barnsley. There was so much hidden talent waiting to hatch into the world. At that point, Barnsley Civic and indeed Barnsley Young Writers became, not just a place for creativity, but also a place for nurturing healthy minds.
Barnsley Young Writers sessions are facilitated by professional writer Nik Perring and I assist, bring the snacks and join in with writing. Vicky joins us from time to time, especially when there’s a new exhibition in town. After five months of sessions, we took our young writers on the train to Sheffield’s iconic Leadmill for their first taste of spoken word. It was the launch for one of Hive’s impressive North of England Young Writers anthologies (which you can read about here). That was a pivotal moment, seeing many BYWs become confident enough to read their work in front of an audience of 150 peers, parents and the wider public. We were incredibly proud of them. The event showcased the work of 60+ young performers, all so varied, it was an inspiration to us all.
Since the summer of 2022, Barnsley Young Writers has seen members come and go, with many of that original cohort still attending when they can or on breaks from uni. And of course, we’ve had many new members join us along the way. Since then, the group have also taken part in many projects. In 2023, Barnsley Civic ran an 18-month-long Historic England funded project called Teenage Wildlife, which explored 70 years of youth culture on Eldon Street (the Civic’s home). As part of this, the group produced new writing inspired by their own teenage experiences, fusing the history of the buildings on Eldon Street. That writing appeared in the group’s first solo Civic publication, which they launched at the Civic’s theatre.
Also in 2023, some of the group took part in Ear to the Streets: 24hrs in the life of South Yorkshire, an audio-visual love letter to the urban and rural life of South Yorkshire, featuring the words and voices of over 40 young writers from across the region’s cities, towns and villages. The film installation was first shown at the Millennium Gallery, Sheffield as part of Off the Shelf Festival of Words and is available to watch here online.
As part of a network, BYW young writers benefit from so many great wider projects and opportunities through Hive. These include writers’ days with visiting professional writers that go in depth into a wide range of writing forms. And, as with the rest of the Hive network, BYWs receive guidance and encouragement from Vicky and Nik to enter major national writing competitions. Many have also been published in Hive’s print anthologies, including After Hours (2024) and most recently The Rising Line (2026).
The group’s work has appeared in exhibitions, other publications in print and online, and in recent years, we’ve taken Barnsley Young Writers workshops into local schools; Netherwood Academy in 2024 and Barnsley Academy in 2025, with each school producing a small publication to celebrate the work created.
In February this year, we joined forces again with Hive on a wider scale to run the South Yorkshire Teens Speech Award, an idea that Vicky had had for a while which found a perfect outlet when I mentioned we could use Barnsley’s council chamber for a live event. This led to us running workshops on speech writing and inviting young people from across South Yorkshire to submit their writing into the competition. Forty of those young people came to the chamber to read powerful speeches in a true parliamentary setting.
Since 2022, Barnsley Young Writers has been supported by a number of partners and funds including grants from Creative Minds and Better Barnsley Bond, and most recently, as part of The Great Childhoods Ambition fund. We aim to continue our collaboration with Hive to keep Barnsley Young Writers housed at the Civic and part of our core programming for as long as we can, as we know how important opportunities like these are in Barnsley, but also because they allow for young people to be part of something bigger and culturally wider for the long term.
We take great pride in our partnership with Hive and what it’s enabled for Barnsley Young Writers and so many young creatives across the region.
And with that, we ask, if you or someone you know is aged 14–19 in Barnsley, and has even the smallest interest in words, send them our way by emailing jasonwhite@barnsleycivic.co.uk. It’s the perfect stepping-stone for anyone wanting to reach their creative potential.
About Hive Young Writers Network
Hive Young Writers Network is the only open access initiative dedicated to developing and connecting young writers (aged 14 to 30) across South Yorkshire and other priority areas of the North. As a not-for-profit cultural organisation led by diverse creative freelancers, Hive brings decades of hands-on expertise to nurturing young writer talent, as both mentors and successful published authors.
Over the last nine years, Hive has pioneered a wide range of approaches to supporting and developing young writers, spanning hobbyist to career interests, and worked in long-term partnership with community and cultural organisations, schools and education providers, and the wider creative industries.
Hive supports young people to reach their artistic potential through access to: guidance, skill-building, showcasing platforms (including print publication, live and digital), new audiences, mentorship, professional feedback, signposting, awards, resources, competitions and development pathways.
Hive’s lively young writers’ community is shaped by a rich tapestry of voices, from beginners through to practising and established young writers. Hive Young Writers are diverse young people from across predominantly high-priority areas of South Yorkshire and the North.
Hive writers have won numerous prestigious awards such as the BBC Young Writers Award, the Orwell Youth Prize, Foyle Young Poet of the Year, the New Poets Prize and the Northern Writers Award. They’ve performed with top poets including Benjamin Zephaniah, Buddy Wakefield, and Hollie McNish, and interviewed authors such as Malorie Blackman. Many Hive writers have gone on to creative careers such as Joe O’Brien (lead guitarist and songwriter of The Reytons) and Sile Sibanda (BBC Radio Sheffield presenter), they’ve also gone on to pioneer new grassroots initiatives in their own communities, such as Mixing Roots for young women of colour, founded by Hive alumni Warda Yassin.
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