RTÉ One
Wednesday December 3 21:35
In 2009, at the height of the global recession, Booker Prize winning author Roddy Doyle and former chief of Amnesty International, Sean Love started something special. It was the first creative writing centre of its type in Europe, nestled under the iconic sports stadium, Croke Park and purposefully positioned in one of the most economically deprived areas of Ireland, in the heart of Dublin. 1 They called it Fighting Words.
Feeling that the Irish education system doesn’t value creative writing, Fighting Words offers a different, more relaxed approach, that sparks creativity and confidence.
Directed by Ross Whitaker (Katie, Beat the Lotto) this documentary observationally follows their most ambitious programme: The Book Project. In this, a group of transition year students from one local inner city or surrounding DEIS school visits every week for a school year and goes from a blank page to a published book full of short stories. This year’s class were from Colaiste Eoin in Finglas. Like many classes before them, they struggled at first before learning about themselves and writing and ultimately proudly competing their book.
