School Workshops

About Bridge

Bridge is our series of workshops that help senior pupils develop their writing, as well as prepare for the challenges of more academic or formal writing at university, college or work. Bridge Fellows help demystify the writing process and provide techniques to help pupils write clearly and confidently in all contexts and situations.

The workshops are run by writers from our Fellowship programme who have experience working with university students. Bridge Fellows work with hundreds of schools across the UK in partnership with the British Library, National Library of Scotland, LEAPS, and others.

Bridge workshops consist of four 50-minute sessions fully funded by the RLF. If you are a school interested in our programme, contact us below.

Contact the England & Wales team Contact the Scotland & Northern Ireland team

Key Objectives

Objectives of the Bridge programme are to:

Share techniques all pupils can use to develop their practical writing skills.
Introduce and review terms used in academic writing.
Give pupils a forum to share, without any pressure, concerns they may have about writing.
Address general issues with writing, grammar, punctuation, style and essay planning.
Boost pupils’ confidence in their ability to write well.

What’s Covered

Our workshops cover the following areas of academic writing:

The purpose of different writing styles
Breaking down essay titles
Key instruction terms in essay titles and what they mean
Essay flow and paragraph plans
Evidence and critical thinking
Introductions and conclusions

The sessions can be scheduled in four sessions on one day or two sessions over two consecutive days or weeks. Each group should have between eight and sixteen students. If your group is bigger, you can invite more Bridge Fellows to work with additional groups.

There has been a notable improvement in the quality of personal statement writing, with those who don’t take an essay subject at A level feeling more confident. It’s been incredibly helpful to be able to refer back to the Bridge tasks to help students to understand how to put what they’ve learned into practice.

Widening Participation Officer, Charter North and East Schools, London

My approach to writing has changed concerning the importance of ensuring every sentence works and, when put together, builds both a clear and accessible argument.

Pupil, Edinburgh Academy

The impact on their essays and dissertations has been positive and significant. Work is clearer and better organised … We look forward hopefully to offering this great opportunity to our future students.

Oban High School, Argyll

We often reference the work the RLF Bridge programme did with our year 12s last year. The impact of those sessions has been long lasting.

Teacher, Dunraven School, London

I managed to learn a lot about the different methods in approaching coursework and essays, and the whole experience has been wonderfully informative.

Pupil, Cherwell School

Reality check on the importance of good writing for all courses … Very much helped and introduced me to the jump from school to university.

Pupil, Queensferry High School

Now it’s been broken down it’s not as scary. The exercises give me a better idea of how to write an essay.

Pupil, Connell Co-op College

Our students appreciated the enthusiasm of the writers leading the workshops and were enthusiastic about the insights they gained. We are so grateful for the work that the Royal Literary Fund has done with our Year 12s.

Bishop Thomas Grant School, Lambeth

I especially enjoyed how rather than being told to change our approaches to writing, we were encouraged to interrogate them ourselves so that we could explore our own motives and adapt the skills we already have to different tasks.

Pupil, Bishop Thomas Grant School

Bridge Fellows

Meet the RLF Fellows who currently run our Bridge workshops across the UK.

Meet our Fellows