This week had a quieter, more behind-the-scenes feel to it, with much of my time spent on remote work—though no less rewarding for it.

Aoife asked me to take on some illustration work for a few of the children's stories. The brief was to create a single page capturing the most prominent elements of each story—characters, setting, dialogue, or some combination of all three. What struck me most, though, was the thinking behind why they do it at all. The idea is that children are so used to being the ones who bring home drawings; having an adult take the time to illustrate their story flips that dynamic entirely. It signals that someone is taking their work seriously, and in doing so, gives them a real sense of ownership and agency over what they've created. It's a small gesture with a lot of meaning behind it.

Midweek, I attended a workshop with a P7 class, which made for an interesting comparison to the P3 session from the week before. It's always fascinating to see how the same format adapts across different ages.

The other highlight of the week was getting to participate in Write Club, one of Fighting Words NI's community outreach programs. It runs fortnightly online and is open to young people in the wider community who want a dedicated space to work on whatever writing projects they have on the go. The final thirty minutes are set aside for sharing work and receiving feedback — from peers as well as mentors, which is the role I stepped into for this session. We ran out of time before we could get through everyone's feedback, which was a little unfortunate, but it genuinely left me eager to come back. I'm already looking forward to the next one in a fortnight.