Our mission at Story Drawing Club is to provide high quality workshops that engage children from a wide range of backgrounds in story writing and drawing activities to improve diversity in children's stories and inspire potential illustrators and writers.

"We think it's fantastic! I think every school would want it. The kids loved it, they thrived and were so engaged."

— Cath Thomas, Headteacher at Porter Croft Academy, 2018

Our Beginning

Whilst reading books to my children, I became frustrated to find so few books that naturally represented the diversity of our friends and local community. I started my Masters at Sheffield Institute of Art, focusing my research on challenging this lack of diversity. I tested creative workshops in local primary schools which led to the formation of Story Drawing Club.

Why we do it

Ethnic minorites in children's literature are significantly under-represented: only 4% of books in this market have Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic main characters. Such a lack of diversity in children's literature represents social exclusion from an early age, and can decrease ambition and increase prejudice against those children who are underrepresented.

4%

of UK children's books have Black, Asian and minority ethnic protagonists.

32.1%

of schoolchildren are of minority ethnic origins.

15%

reduction in art hours at state schools.

In addition, Story Drawing Club tries to offer children a chance to express themselves at a point when changes in educational policy are leading to art being deprioritised in state schools. We hope that the more that having the chance to draw, paint, imagine worlds and experiment are shared by all, the more the media and creators of our media will represent all of us.

Get in touch

Schools

Please get in touch if you are interested in Story Drawing Club coming to visit your school.

Children and parents

Your school will let you know if you will be involved in one of our workshops, and you can visit this website or @storydrawingclub to keep up to date with our news or see artwork displayed on line.

Funders

We want to take Story Drawing Club to as many ethnically and economically diverse schools as we can. Schools currently have little budget for the Arts so we need to fund and subsidise our workshops so that we can visit as many schools as we can.