Barnsley Young Writers

Barnsley Civic is home to Barnsley Young Writers, a free to access supportive environment where aspiring young writers aged 14 – 19 can explore their craft, run in partnership with Hive South Yorkshire.

As well as working with award-winning, professional writers to explore different writing forms through fun exercises that will build writing confidence, the group meet every two weeks in accessible spaces and is a safe space for LGBTQIA+, disabled and neurodivergent young people.

Since relaunching post-lockdown in February 2022, Barnsley Young Writers has reached over 35 young people. They are currently working on their first group publication which will collect their writing from the last 12 months.

In a summer workshop exploring the hustle and bustle of the high-street of yesteryear, the group picked out the buildings and histories that resonated with them the most and created these poems.

Eldon Street
A Week in the Life

Monday

Ben Whiston

Hot morning sun. I’m old McDonald’s
on the corner, smelling of Egg McMuffins
and grilled chicken salads, listening

to office workers grumbling as they sip
my black coffee. Soon the people will thin out,
disappear to their boring jobs, the kids to school.

Then dinnertime, and they’ll be back, mostly
my regulars, workmen ordering Quarter Pounders
with cheese, the woman who always screams

at the server because there are too many gherkins
in her double Big Mac. That’s when I’ll turn
to look out of my windows and remember

the good times on the street,
that are no more. Now I just listen
to old people trying to figure out their pension.

Tuesday

Sofie Stothers

Sunshine, but clouds loom nearby.
Now I go by the name Connection Clothing,
but once I was Warner Gothard, the home
of the camera flash, the snap-snap,
of endless smiling faces all day long –
giddy families in Santa hats wishing for
a festive memory while holding down
that one hyper toddler, the fake smiles of
exhausted parents trying to get their fussy,
teething baby to grin. The place to sit up
straight and giggle at the camera man,
shouting cheeeese! The place where Harry
and Jane wished for the perfect wedding
keepsake – later a reminder of the lost
centre-pieces and squished cake. I used to be
the place of the perfect picture. Now I am
nostalgia, a hazy snapshot of the ghosts of those
who once sat in front of my all-seeing lens.

Wednesday

Izzy Whiston

Dark skies. I am the Centenary Rooms, thudding
with another group of Metallica wannabies,
as they rock out to their heavy basslines

and guitar solos. My spotlight eyes shine bright
over the swirling pit of teenagers seeking a bit
of a thrill, to counter the dull reality that lies

beyond me. These shrieking lyrics are nothing
to me now. I am one with the noise. A safe place,
a haven of chaos, for all the freaks of the world.

Thursday

Kes

It’s cloudy, and I am the hairdressers.
My doors fly open and in pour the elderly,
the divorced, the stay-home mums.
Sandra’s come in for a colour – lush blonde,
and the smell of peroxide floods over
the chatter about Millie’s new husband,
and Katie expresses, more than once,
her complete intolerance of Maurice and his
boyfriends, while simultaneously slagging-off
her ex for the tenth time this week.
Hair flutters seamlessly to my floor, itches
at my corners while Lucy happily goes on
about her mum’s new Shatner perm.
And as the day darkens, in come the youngers
for mohawks and blacks with neon greens
and hot pinks, buzzing about upcoming gigs
and dates. Eventually, talk dies down,
and the people and their shiny new hair
disappear, to leave my floor to be swept
for the last time, brush stroking me to sleep.
Then I close my shutter-eyes, prepare myself
for Friday’s weekend, hairspray rush.

Friday

Chloe Pearson

It’s a cloudy sun above me. I am the cinema,
watching you people come and go, seeing love
bloom and wilt, couples kiss and handhold.
I wait patiently to tell my story, but you
only want the stories I play to you through
my portal to other worlds. The hums and thrums
of lights and speakers, the snap of twigs,
a gunshot in the middle east. All day and night,
I open my flickering, square eye and let
the adverts roll. I’ve heard every naughty
whisper, every crunch and rattle. I wait for you
to cheer and applaud me when I’ve done my job,
but it’s only what I offer that you pay attention to.
And I’ll never be able to smell my freshly-popped
corn, my delicious pick and mix, nor lounge
in my comfy seats. At least, I like the dark,
it means I can shine brightly for you all.

Saturday

Becca Green

9 o’clock on the dot, and the bullet train
cuts through relentless rain, shuttle carriages
carry the dreamers, the lost souls, the lovers

out of town. Moon beams dance through
murky windows, painting the silence
of each passenger in a new light,

endless possibilities. Inside, the ticket box
is jammed, crowded by bustling travellers
who missed their chance to escape, now

returning home for the evening, to desolate
rooms and eerie hallways, wishing they were
flying with the forlorn blur of the train.

Sunday

Brooke Lees

Trying to rain. I’m that big black and white clock
with some dude’s name across my cheeks, listening
to grandparents try to explain about me to kids
who bury their eyes in their phones. My face stares
down onto the street where hundreds of them walk by
every day. I watch them all, remembering this one
sunny day in the late 80s – the day I stopped ticking.
It was a Wednesday just like today in mid-June.
A cute couple had just walked out of Benjamin Harral’s,
the jewellers below. She gushed about the sparkling,
new ring on her finger, and held it up, as if for me
to see. He smiled down to his shoes, his own feelings
hidden from my view. Then they held hands
and disappeared out of sight and into history.

In a second workshop, our writers created original poems inspired by the history of Eldon Street. Clocks, pianos, dance schools and photography studios were brought to life as the writers gave buildings voices.

Thank you to writer Vicky Morris from hive South Yorkshire, who led these sessions.

The Dances

The Civic, Eldon Street, August 2022

The day starts with the usual feeling: a scratchy net
draped over my bones, a fine mesh there to stop
crazy drunkards from destroying me – my aged arches,
my dusty brickwork skin, that dates all the way back
to 1878. Their intensions for this were good, or so

they want you to think. But just like netting placed
over towering cliffs to shield passers-by, this net is
a safety net for the people, not for me, to protect them
from the murky secrets that lie buried in the darkest
depths of my soul, hidden by towering steel and stone.

Horrifying stories lost to the night as each new day
brings hope. But, know this, a day will come when
the net will break – and all the secrets will spill out,
the broken dreams that were stacked hidden behind
the props and make-up, as the fake faces danced

across my stage. And when the smiles, the net
and the curtains falls, I will fall too, demolished
like those glorious, now-forgotten buildings
that once surrounded me – demolished like
the dreams of the tiny dances trapped in my heart.

Brooke Lees

Old Upright Piano

The Civic, August 2022

I remember every touch placed upon my keys.
The sweet sounds I made when their fingers
stiffened over me. The rough calluses on their hands,
from exploring other options. I was classical

back in the day. I was adored. Now, I’m left
unloved. Shunned for the way I was made.
Not modern enough. I’m too hard. I got dismissed.
That is, until someone made me feel beautiful again

for a while. They painted me with birds and butterflies,
llamas and leaves, and I was cherished and played
for them my sweet melodies. But now I’m back here,
sat in the dark and the dust, longing for their touch.

Chloe Pearson

Mavis Burrows School of Dance

The Civic 1960 – 1980

The sun shines bright through my glass eyes.
Morning has arrived, though I’ve been up for hours.
Parents fly through my doors to drop off her
and pick up him, to hand in their monthly payments.

To the ladies too old to still be working, you remember
how Mavis’s voice would bounce brisé off my walls,
and even your grandmothers were once the mothers
who saved for the tap and ballet shoes that drummed

my shiny wooden boards. The ghosts of girls still
lean against my black polished bars, complaining about
foot arches and waist sizes, and how on earth did she
manage to bend her leg like that? Delicate piano

accompaniments fill my air as young instructors
drill out counts and steps, complimenting her turn
or his temps levé. I can still see them all as they
practice, practice, perfecting their turns, letting out

curses when their fragile frames hit the floor.
Then comes the halt of music, the corrections,
adjustments, the clap, clap – Again! Again!
Before legs leap, and the show starts once more.

Izzy Whiston

Grand Piano

The Civic, storage room, August 2022

Hidden in the corner, she rests
where dust collecting. She rots, splinters,
her keys silenced, stuck resonating
somewhere in history. She has become
out of tune. Sweet symphonies
are now her memories, her losses.

She longs for slick fingers to trace her
ivory kingdom, aches to envelope
the choked-up air, to unfurl further

her swan song. Nostalgia beats at her
bronze bodice, holds her hostage,
on a pedestal of forbidden melodies.

Becca Green

Storeroom

The Civic, August 2022

Darkness shrouds my belongings, old props
from forgotten plays, rejects from the past.

I’m full of objects that belonged to souls
who met their gruesome death within my walls

long ago. Those spirits now stalk the rooms
where more shows go on. They are saddened

that they were forgotten. Now they want to give
the living something they’ll never forget.

Ben Whiston

Lonely Piano

The Civic, August 2022

My voice rings out in a melodic tune,
but it’s not the song I want heard. Once
my voice was one that could make people swoon,
now I’m nothing more than a voice unheard.

Under my lid, I hold the stories, the laughter,
the tears of many. People used to listen to me
out on the streets. But now nobody wants the tales
of any, they just want car stereos and sick beats.

So, I sit in storage, my wooden body covered
in dust. To some I’m now just garbage. But
to others, after all this time, my tune is still a must.
They want me to sing my charming, angelic song.

Even if it is directed by my puppet master’s
fingers, without their movement against
my worn-down keys, I fade away faster and faster.
They used to haul me around, so a sea of ears

could listen to my sounds. They would cheer and sing
with glee as my music bounced around the theatre.
Now I’m here and chamber-bound, waiting,
waiting, waiting to be found.

Sofie Stothers

The Civic Speaks

August 2022

Once I was a grand building, housing a hall,
a library, shops and institutes, all gathered
in the palms of my hands, like the dust
that now covers my once, thriving back rooms,
turning my bones grey. I have been a home
to a museum and a theatre – still here, though
so much has gone now. Gone with age. Gone
with renovations. Gone with an inferno
and the rush of panicked, little feet like baby
wildebeests on the run from a pack of lions.
My artefacts lie dormant and broken,my skin
crawls with the cold spots of the ghosts who roam
just a few rooms over, from this huddled group
of teens, laughing and littering my tables
with wrappers and words about me. And it feels
like they’re the only ones who appreciate what
I’ve seen, what I’ve been through – who bother
to write down my stories with their pens.