THE IMAGINING HISTORY PROGRAMME UK
End of year report 2025
This year, our 10 th anniversary since our first workshop in 2015, Imagining History UK reached over 100 young writers nationwide and delivered over 70 hours of small-group workshops. Our live programme ran between May and November in: Edinburgh, North Cornwall, North Wales, Suffolk and North London. Our online programme ran from 29 June till 27 July.
IHUK Live: our collaborations in 2025
Our work would be impossible without our schools and venues partnerships. We are more grateful than can be expressed in a sentence to the teachers, venue administrators, educators and volunteer staff who have made our live projects possible.
This year we worked with:
- Firrhill High School, Edinburgh
- Farlingaye High School, Woodbridge
- Sir James Smith’s School, Camelford
- Ysgol Dyfrryn Ogwen, Bethesda
- The Archer Academy, Nth London
Historical sites (respectively):
- Trinity House of Leith, Edinburgh (Historic Environment Scotland)
- Sutton Hoo Ships Co, Woodbridge, Suffolk
- Trerice, Cornwall (National Trust)
- Penrhyn Castle, Bangor Gwynedd (National Trust Wales)
Here is a comment from our teacher/collaborator, Tara Harbut-Sellers, at Sir James Smiths School, Camelford:
Allowing the children to independently discover Trerice’s past, whether in the beautiful knot garden that enabled everyone to spy on everyone else, to read the documents and journals, or stare at the family portraits, fostered a sense of inquisitiveness. Writing in such a stimulating and exciting setting was then of course, invaluable. A classroom environment cannot do that. As one of the students said to me when we were in Trerice: ‘‘I realise I can write so much better away from the bells and noise in school. I don’t feel rushed here, I can take my time to dream, to create characters, but in school we only have an hour to make something up and then finish it. It stresses me out as I can’t do it properly.’’ This to me, spoke volumes. Therefore, to have the children rush up to me, excitedly explaining who their characters were and what they planned to do with them, was fantastic! The children felt empowered because they were given choices – and the time to think.
Special note of thanks
Until this year, we and Sir James Smith’s School, Camelford were privileged to be part of an innovative relationship with the North Cornwall Book Festival. Since 2018, our young writers developed their writing based on their exploration of historical sites around Cornwall, then presented excerpts of their work live at the festival. This was a unique tie-in which allowed the writers not only to develop their writing, but also their communication and organisational skills.
[a full list of our partner schools and venues since 2015 can be found at http://www.imagininghistory.org]
IHUK Online
Our online programming originated as a lockdown pivot programme. It was subesequently developed for all writers listed for YWSP to further develop their recognised talent for Historical Fiction. We invite writers to immerse themselves in both their historical and their contemporary world.
Our offers to young writers in 2025
This year’s programme offered four projects, three content-based offers and one skill-extension offer.
- The Lure and Lore of the Sea: this project has been running in collaboration with Trinity House of Leith, Edinburgh and immerses writers in themes and issues relating to our island’s relationship with the borderlands created by sea.
- Romancing the Land: using Sir Walter Scott’s romantic visions of landscape in his poem The Lay of the Last Minstrel and his novel Waverley as a starting point to spin the young writers out into their own historical landscapes.
- Cathedral: a weave of life: using the life and times of St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh as a starting point to explore historical lives contained within the world of a mediaeval cathedral. Writers explored their own ideas ‘cathedral’.
- New Word Worlds to be Heard – this project attracts writers who might be interested in exploring writing for theatre and the media, using their YWSP entry as a starting point. A technical exercise becomes a development of new sensory worlds, conceiving writing in its broadest sense.
Over the course of four weekly workshops in July, writers are sent out to use the world they discover as a primary historical resource to enhance and expand their skills of observation, analysis and expression. Since 2022 we have been collaborating with the Adam Matthews large online digital archive of original historical documents, images and maps.
Feedback from Alexander Andrews, a new online participant for 2025
I came into the IHUK workshops not really knowing what to expect, and am happy to say that it was an incredible experience.
The Romancing the Land workshops were very formative for me in thinking about the atmosphere around me as I write – be that what I am listening to or where I am physically or what I have just done.
The month of sessions has definitely been very stimulating of thought-directions; every session a thousand new avenues seemed to open. I tend to tunnel very closely into the story I write but these sessions allowed me to expand and look at my writing with a wider lens.
Founding Ideas
The Imagining History Programme UK emerged out of discussions in 2015, between the founder of the Young Walter Scott Prize, the late Duchess of Buccleuch, and the director of YWSP, Alan Caig Wilson. The intention was to bring together, in as many ways as we could, those young writers who would benefit from an exploration of Historical Fiction – not simply creative writing, but a form of historical speculation.
The original template of our workshops was devised by Alan Caig Wilson, Elizabeth Ferretti, Roxanne Matthews and Dr Dina Gusejnova. Workshops should embody the values, as we imagined them, of Walter Scott as a young writer himself – a desire to get out and explore the historical world, the development of knowledge about what he experienced, and a freedom of exploration of the space in between the ‘facts’ of history, a love of people and how they interact.
In the ten years since we created our first workshop, appropriately enough at Abbotsford, Home of Sir Walter Scott, we have created workshops across the UK – Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, London, the Isle of Man, East Anglia, and the Midlands. We have built rewarding partnerships with historical education and adjacent organisations, allowing many young writers and their teachers, to experience our unique approach to inspiring the writing of Historical Fiction.
We believe that the writing of a short story based on historical research and intuitive exploration of place, relationships and events, introduces young people to a sense of consequence and the value of informed speculation and taking a long view when trying to understand the ways of the world. The developing breadth of inspiration and the richness of insight of many of the entrants to the Young Walter Scott Prize over the past ten years, bears witness to young creative minds tussling with momentous ideas.
Some writers, by dint of entering more than once as they grow older within the age-brackets of YWSP, have taken great advantage of the gently held talent development projects that we offer. From open access schools workshops, through the Prize, to the mentored online process, many young writers have used our offer as a springboard for their writerly ambitions.
In a number of cases a writer who has entered this process has gone on to win or be listed for other creative writing prizes – including the BBC Young Writer Award, the Wilbur and Niso Smith Foundation Author of Tomorrow and the Paul Mellon Centre Write on Art Award.
Imagining History UK and the Young Walter Scott Prize offer, potentially, a three-stage development opportunity to young writers exploring Historical Fiction. Theoretically, a writer might progress from an open access schools workshop, to a listed entry in the competition, followed by a month’s online immersion programme (including mentoring on request). Our passion and commitment is to nurture young creative minds, based on what they have already learned during their schooling. We validate and celebrate their interest, introducing writers to a range of often intirely new avenues of thought and exploration.
Faculty
IHUK projects for 2025, online and live, were devised and delivered by:
- Elizabeth Ferretti (writer/educator/IHUK development associate),
- Roxanne Matthews (art historian/educator),
- Stephanie Haxton (writer/historian/educator),
- Dr Dina Gusejnova (academic historian),
- Demelza Mason* (archaeologist/writer/educator)
- Helen Cross (radio- and screenwriter/educator)
- Alan Caig Wilson (theatre professional/arts educator)
- *Demelza Mason is a former winner of a Young Walter Scott Prize
This year we were joined by Stephen Preston of the education and interpretation team at St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh.
The technical writing challenge project – to turn a prose story into a radio/podcast drama – was orginally devised and taught for two years by the radio and tv dramatist Tim Stimpson, who was unable to join us this year. We welcomed Helen Cross into the team this year with great pleasure.
Organisational support
As director of both the Young Walter Scott Prize and Imagining History UK, I am indebted to my colleagues who variously administer, judge, publicise, devise, and deliver the whole range of activity of our offer to young writers. We are financially supported by the Buccleuch Living Heritage Trust.
The Prize is administered by Lindsey Frazer, assisted by Kathryn Ross. Publicity and publication of our annual anthologies is dealt with by Fiona Atherton at Stonehill Sal PR Ltd. We are part of the ‘family’ of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. Rosi Byard-Jones, the first winner of a YWSP prize in the older age-group in 2015 now serves as a judge for both YWSP and the Walter Scott Prize.
Edinburgh
December 2025
Alan Caig Wilson
Director