Under the first Creative Youth Plan, the Creative Ireland Programme partnered with Fighting Words to deliver Story Seeds, a programme supporting young people to write their own story with the aim of enabling them to begin to understand their own life story.

This initiative engaged a variety of ages groups and cohorts, particularly those at risk of marginalisation and in 2022 the support through Creative Youth helped to reach over 12,000 young participants.

In 2023, Creative Ireland and Fighting Words will partner for one year to deliver the Story Seeds programme under the Government’s Shared Island initiative. In collaboration with Fighting Words Northern Ireland, they will seek to increase cross-community activities with children and young people through engagement in shared creative writing activities. Working with community based partners, schools, local libraries and arts centres, and with cross-community volunteer mentors, Fighting Words will deliver creative activities that will connect children across communities, across traditions and across the border.

"The Creative Ireland Programme aims to deploy creativity to increase opportunities for cross-community cultural and creative initiatives between children and young people"

Fighting Words provides free tutoring and mentoring in creative writing and related arts to as many children, young adults and adults with special needs as they can reach. Their aim is to help children and young people, and adults who did not have this opportunity as children, to discover and harness the power of their own imaginations and creative writing skills.

At its core, Fighting Words is also about something much broader and more inclusive. It is about using the creative practice of writing and storytelling to strengthen our children and teenagers – from a wide range of backgrounds – to be resilient, creative and successful shapers of their own lives.