Nikki Heath also introduced us to Storybird, a creative writing site which allows children to use images to inspire their writing. This reminded me of some work which Sara Bird, our Education Officer at Newcastle University, has produced. Sara has used some of the wonderful images in our Special Collections to creat a resource called Archives Alive, which contains some fab resources which can be used by schools. Part of this is Authors Alive, a creative writing tool which helps children frame a story around characters and situations in our collections. This is taken from Authors Alive:

Choose a character, anything from a smelly fisherman to a drunken rat.
Put your character in a desperate situation, a public hanging or a daring rescue.
Choose a place for some action, an oyster bar or the toilet.
Finally pick your object, a murderer’s socks or some killer false teeth.