Guest Blog: Paul Clayton On Grimm and Co's HERE NOT THERE Gala

I owe my career in the arts to Rotherham. To many, it's an unremarkable little town in the north of England, and it hasn't always had the best press. Yet growing up there in the 1970s, there were lots of opportunities for me to fuel my love of acting. Returning there four years ago on a visit, I walked into the magical shop of Grimm and Co for the first time and, all at once, that child returned.

Grimm and Co is an amazing children's literacy charity founded by a remarkable woman, Deborah Bullivant. She understands that the key to young people's potential is their imagination. And just as it allowed my spotty 16-year-old self to imagine standing on the stage in London's West End, so Grimm and Co provides an arena for children's imaginations today.

Grimm and Co is about stories. Through its school's workshops, its Saturday clubs and its holiday courses, it offers the chance for children all over Yorkshire to create tales from their imagination. The environment in which it encourages them to do this is remarkable: a potion-filled wonderland where they can create a story sitting on a toilet in a tiled meeting room and end their day by sliding down a tortuous beanstalk.

All stories really only live once they are told. Honoured to have become a patron of Grimm, I realised the performing arts had a role to play helping children to get their stories watched, and listened to, and seen. To write a play as a nine-year-old and to see an audience of 300 people laughing and applauding your words gives you an experience of success like no other. I put on plays I'd scribbled in my spare time at school, but today the rigours of the education system don't necessarily provide such opportunities. Grimm and Co is filling that gap.

We staged young writers' work at a local theatre in 2016. It was a riotous success. Success always brings with it a request to do it again, but I'm not a fan of repetition. Eighteen months later, Grimm's writers created six film scripts. We then sent these away to six individual film companies. The writers next saw their material on screen at Sheffield's Showroom cinema, A packed, popcorn-eating audience applauding, cheering and wiping away the odd tear as the imaginations of the children met talents of the filmmakers.

After theatre and screen, it seems there's no stopping. I chased an old contact who sat on a big chair at the BBC and a couple of months later, he commissioned Grimm to provide an Afternoon Theatre for BBC Radio 4. Fifteen young writers collaborated with a BBC producer and a cast of professional actors created 40 minutes of the most ear-bending, imagination-stretching radio drama the BBC ever heard. They came together in a room last November to hear their efforts transmitted to the nation. An experience to show them how work breeds success and imagination is the key to it all.

Grimm and Co are now on the move to a bigger, more adventurous venue in the town. The current situation hasn't locked down its creative output. Virtual writing classes have produced poetry and stories, which will air on YouTube this Saturday read by the likes of Gary Oldman and Olivia Colman. None of it would be possible without the imaginative young writers of Grimm and Co.

Find out more out the Here Not There virtual gala here

Watch a trailer below!

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