The wonder of nature meets the mechanised 21st Century in one of Story Factory’s most popular workshops. Watch your students take flight as they are immersed in an imaginative coming-of-age story that inspires them to pen the tale of meeting their own fantastical robot bird. Special guest writing techniques in the workshop include onomatopoeia, simile and narrative structure.

Fasten your tricorns and polish your blades. This program will arm every young swashbuckling scallywag with the literary skills they need for a creatively narrated life of sea-faring, kraken-killing and treasure-nicking. Students will craft vivid descriptions, create nuanced characters, and plot persuasive mutinies. So you want to be a pirate? Let's get stAAARRRRRRRRted.

Harness the energy and vitality of contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists like King Stingray, Zacharaiahah Fielding and Baker Boy to inspire your students to write their own lyrics. This program immerses students in Indigenous cultures and languages from diverse communities around Australia. They will witness Yolŋu Matha and Hip Hop effortlessly fusing together as they explore rhyme, similes and metaphor to share their own experiences and values in forms such as rap and lullabies.

In this workshop, students are transformed into guerilla or ‘pop-up’ poets, i.e. poets who publish poems in unexpected and unconventional places to add a bit of magic to peoples’ days! They are supported to write a list poem based on Nikita Gill’s poem ‘An Ounce of Joy’. They're then invited to find the perfect place to hide their poem for someone else to find.

In this one-off workshop, students will explore the vibrant artworks of Amy Claire Mills, a disabled and neurodivergent artist working on Gadigal Land, in Sydney. Inspired by her bold and imaginative textiles and soft sculpture pieces, students will reflect on the kind of soft spaces—safe, welcoming places—they’d love to spend time in.

Students imagine they have travelled through a vortex and are now trapped inside the world of a retro video game called Video Vortex. They choose their own avatar who progresses through the strange and different levels of this game as they overcome obstacles to “level up” and return home. Students develop skills in sensory writing and focus on world building and narrative structure as they create short episodes/chapters that describe their experiences moving through the game.

In this program students will write news reports of invented traditions celebrated at their own creatively imagined towns. They will be inspired by traditions from far-flung places around the world to create stories, monologues, celebrating town festivities and interviewing imagined residents after a small town incident. Students will develop descriptive writing skills, characterisation and setting creation. Students have the opportunity to write in a news modality, while exercising their creativity and imagination.