Introduction
Over six weeks in Belfast, I worked with Fighting Words Northern Ireland, a children's charity that uses creative writing to build confidence and give young people a voice. My placement had two strands. The first, and the larger, was preparing for and running writing workshops for primary school children and for young immigrants who had recently arrived in Northern Ireland. The second was supporting the Belfast Book Festival, which brings authors, artists and the wider community together to share their books and their work.
I went in expecting to learn something about how a charity operates. I came out with a clearer understanding of what leadership requires. The workshops taught me to lead by noticing what people are good at and building on it. The festival taught me that good leadership depends on unglamorous logistical work done carefully. This report covers both strands and then draws them together.
Part One: The Writing Workshops
The structure of the work
Two to three times a week, we ran workshops built around a process the charity had developed. Most sessions were for primary school children aged between seven and twelve. Over the six weeks I took part in at least ten to twelve of them, and the repetition taught me as much as any single session. Each workshop followed the same sequence, and I came to appreciate how much that structure supported the creativity happening inside it.
The first stage was generating ideas. With a class of twenty to twenty-five children, the challenge was to take an abstract question- what is a story?- and make it concrete. We broke it down into its parts: the characters, the setting, the conflict and the plot. Children who cannot yet define a narrative arc can still tell you who their character is, where the story happens and what goes wrong. Once the story was broken into those pieces, every child had something to contribute.
My role in this stage was to gather ideas from the whole room and turn them into a basic outline. A room of twenty-five children produces twenty-five different suggestions at once, and the skill lay in listening to all of them and finding a shape that included as many as possible. That was harder than it sounds. A story assembled from many voices has to hold together, and the children need to see their own idea in the finished outline. I learned to acknowledge each contribution, connect it to the ones around it and keep the group moving.
The second stage was the writing itself. Once the outline was agreed, we split into smaller groups, and I was assigned three or four children to support individually. I helped them start, often with a strong opening line, because a blank page intimidates children as much as it does adults. I read their work back to them as they went and encouraged them to keep developing it.
The third stage was presentation and feedback. Each child came to the front of the class and presented their story, and we gave them feedback. Standing up to share something you have made is a vulnerable act, and I saw how much the feedback mattered. It had to be honest enough to help and warm enough that the child left wanting to write again. Learning to strike that balance was one of the most useful things I took from the placement.
Working with different confidence levels and backgrounds
The children came from different backgrounds, and they arrived with different levels of confidence and different experiences of the world. Some volunteered ideas immediately. Others waited, watched, and offered nothing unless asked directly. A single approach would have served only the confident children and lost the rest.
What I tried to do was treat each child's background as a resource rather than a gap to be managed. If a child knew a particular culture well, or had an idea they were excited about, I built on it directly. I would say, in effect: you know this well, so let's make it part of the story. That made the child the expert on something, and that changes how a child behaves in a group. A quiet child who has just been told their knowledge is valuable often becomes a different participant within minutes.
This shaped how I understand inclusive leadership. Inclusion is more than making sure everyone is in the room and has a turn to speak. It means looking at each person and asking what they are good at and what they feel confident about, then using that as the foundation for what they create. The approach forced me to pay close attention to individuals in a group setting, and I think it made me a more perceptive and more generous leader than I was at the start of the six weeks.
The workshop with young people from Eritrea
The most meaningful part of the placement was a workshop with young people aged eighteen to twenty-one who had come to Northern Ireland from Eritrea. It stood apart from the rest, and the circumstances explain why.
The workshop took place in the aftermath of anti-immigration protests in Belfast. That was a difficult time for the participants. They were newly arrived in a place where some people had just demonstrated publicly against people like them. The charity wanted the workshop to offer something different: a chance to turn their attention away from those events, and an opportunity to be happy about something and celebrate it together.
I approached it with care. The participants were older than the children we usually worked with, and the context was heavier. What I found was that the same process worked. Creating a story gave everyone a shared task, and a shared task made conversation easy. As we built characters and settings, people talked about where they came from and what they had experienced, and I got to hear about their lives and to build real connections with them.
One conversation stays with me. I was talking with a young woman from Eritrea, and we discovered that we both loved Bollywood films. I was surprised, because I had not expected it, and that surprise taught me something about my own assumptions. I grew up in Mumbai, so Bollywood is part of my background in an obvious way. She had no such connection, yet she loved the same films I did. It was a reminder that people's tastes and interests rarely map onto the boundaries we assume. Two people who look like they share nothing can turn out to share a great deal, and finding that common ground was the basis of the whole exercise.
The workshop was designed for children, and the participants were adults, so I was aware of the mismatch. What I noticed was that the creative outlet mattered regardless of age. Many of them seemed not to have had the opportunity to use their imagination in this way before, at least in this kind of structured, collaborative setting, and they clearly enjoyed it. By helping them create stories, we gave them a way to express themselves that was entirely their own, in a week when they had every reason to feel unwelcome.
My biggest takeaway from this strand of the placement is that people who differ widely in temperament, background and experience can each contribute something valuable when given the right structure. The creative writing workshop was that structure. Through it we explored people's strengths, their lives and their experiences, and used them to make something new: stories.
Part Two: The Belfast Book Festival
The nature of the work
The second strand of the placement was at the Belfast Book Festival. The festival gives authors and artists a place to share their books and work with the community, and it depends on a large amount of organisation behind the scenes. I worked alongside the organising staff and with the authors themselves, helping to make sure the panels ran smoothly. The panels discussed authors and the books they were writing, and each one needed a room prepared, guests looked after and the timing managed.
This work was very different from the workshops. The workshops were about people, creativity and improvisation in the moment. The festival was about logistics: rooms, schedules, guests and making sure everything happened when and where it was meant to.
What logistics taught me
Day-to-day event tasks do not look appealing on paper. Organising rooms, checking that guests have what they need and making sure people know where to go are not the parts of an event anyone advertises. Nobody attends a festival for the room arrangements.
What I learned is that those tasks are what make everything else possible. A panel of authors discussing their work is only worth attending if it starts on time, if the room is ready and if the guests are comfortable and know what is expected of them. When these details are handled well, nobody notices them. When they are handled badly, everyone does. The visible success of an event rests on invisible, careful work.
I found that I came to value this work in its own right, and I no longer saw it as a chore between the interesting parts. It also changed how I think about the people who do this work. Leadership is often imagined as vision and decision-making, but a leader who ignores logistics will fail the people who depend on them. The panels ran well because the staff and volunteers took the details seriously, and I saw that as a form of respect for the authors, the audience and the event itself.
Management as a skill to develop
These are managerial skills, and I want to use them as a leader. Organising a room, coordinating guests and keeping an event on schedule all require anticipating problems before they arise, communicating clearly and staying calm when something changes. I want to build these abilities deliberately, because I now see that good intentions and good ideas are not enough. A leader who cannot organise the practical side of a project cannot deliver it.
Part Three: What I Learned About Leadership
The two strands of the placement taught me complementary lessons, and together they give me a more complete picture of leadership than either would alone.
The first lesson, from the workshops, is about inclusion. Being an inclusive leader means looking at each person and asking what they are good at and what they are confident in, and then using that as the basis for what they contribute. I learned this with children who had different levels of confidence and different experiences, and I learned it again with young people from Eritrea who were facing a difficult moment. In both settings the approach was the same: find the strength, build on it and let the person create something of their own.
The second lesson, from the festival, is about management. Leading well requires competence in the practical, unglamorous work that keeps a project running. It means valuing logistics, taking small tasks seriously and understanding that a well-run event reflects care for everyone involved.
The third lesson, which runs through both, is about people management specifically. In the workshops I managed groups of children and guided individuals through the writing process. At the festival I worked with staff and authors and coordinated tasks. Each setting required me to read people accurately, communicate clearly and adapt my approach to the person in front of me. These skills apply to almost any role I might hold in the future.
The placement also taught me something about myself. I learned that I am most effective as a leader when I pay close attention to individuals, and that I take genuine satisfaction from helping someone find something they are good at. I also learned that I can commit to logistical work with care, and that I value it more than I expected. Working in Belfast, with people from many backgrounds, gave me a strong sense of how much can be built when people are given the space and the structure to contribute.
Conclusion
My six weeks with Fighting Words Northern Ireland gave me the experience of leadership in two very different forms. In the workshops, I helped children and young immigrants turn their ideas and experiences into stories, and I learned to lead by recognising what each person brings. At the Belfast Book Festival, I supported the logistics that allowed authors and artists to share their work with the community, and I learned how much depends on careful management.
I will carry both lessons into every leadership role I take on. I will look for people's strengths and build on them, and I will give the practical details the attention they deserve. The workshops showed me that inclusion begins with attention to the individual, and the festival showed me that good intentions must be backed by good organisation. Together, they have shaped the kind of leader I want to be.