Mulberry Schools Trust warmly invites you to join their celebration of lyrical letter writing, Letters to Our Daughters, which is running again in 2024 for the first time in six years.
This is an exciting opportunity to engage girls in your school with politics, gender and creative writing.
If you had a daughter, what advice would you give her for today’s world?
What message from your present would you send to her future?
If you could write back to your younger self, what would you say?
If you had a message for young women as a whole, past, present or future, what would it be?
Could you write it with beauty, and power?
Mulberry Schools Trust has commissioned Applied Stories to create a unique set of online resources to support schools taking part in Letters to our Daughters 2024.
You can now access a curated series of free online videos with professional writers, filmed specially to be played to classes of students aged 11-18, and packed with tips to inspire budding young writers to craft their own texts in response to our title. There is also a suite of downloadable online worksheets to get you started, which can be used in timetabled classes, after school, or set as homework.
Videos 1-12, about crafting your letter, are below.
Videos 13-25, featuring interviews and tips from inspiring female writers, can be accessed here.
Alternatively, all 25 videos can be viewed in order as a Vimeo playlist.
Schools who submit a set of first draft letters by the deadline (24 May 2024) will be offered a live online workshop with one or more of our professional writers, and receive some bespoke notes on re-writing your class’s entries for a second draft deadline (19 July 2024).
A longlist of our favourite letters will be published in a new anthology in the autumn, with eight finalists invited to perform their letters live at the Global Girl Leading conference in London’s QE2 conference centre in October 2024. These speeches will be audio recorded for posterity and sent to each participating school, along with photographic portraits of their writers.
Welcome to Letters to Our Daughters 2024
How to take part
A writer speaks about her career
And starting to imagine your own...
Start generating your own ideas using Sharmila's Letter Map
Fin shares a poem he wrote for his daughter's sixth birthday
Sharmila Chauhan takes a closer look at Real by Maryam Naasir from the 2018 Letters to Our Daughters volume
Sharmila walks you through the four quadrants of the Letter Map and how they can help you build up what you want to say.
Sharmila introduces actor and writer Yusra Warsama
Sharmila speaks to Yusra Warsama about how locations can influence you, and affect your artistic voice as you grow up
Sharmila speaks to Yusra about other art forms she loves, her own artistic journey, and finding your creative space as a young artist.
Sharmila asks Yusra where she finds inspiration, then Yusra turns the tables and ask Sharmila about her life and career
Free downloadable resources for schools accompanying the Letters To Our Daughters 2024 web series above.
Keep checking back! There will be new ones with each new video.
Please reach us at letters@appliedstories.co.uk if you cannot find an answer to your question.
Letters to Our Daughters is aimed at girls aged 11-18, who attend one of the schools invited by Mulberry Schools Trust to take part.
Entry is by invitation from Mulberry Schools Trust and numbers capped for capacity reasons. However if your school would like to take part please email letters@appliedstories.co.uk, if any have dropped out it might be possible to accommodate others.
First draft letters must be received by 6pm on Friday 24 May 2024, and second drafts by Friday 19 July 2024.
Once your school has registered to take part, you will receive an email from Applied Stories about booking a 30-min 'online hello' with our writing tutors. After the first draft deadline on 24 May, all schools submitting five or more letters will be offered a free 90-min redrafting workshop at a time of your convenience.
If they make it through to the final eight, then yes. This will be a supported process with coaching from a professional theatre director. Performances will all take place at the Global Girl Leading conference in central London on Friday 11 October 2024.
If you feel inspired to write your own letter, then by all means. However please note that only letters from female students will be considered for publication or performance.
The eight finalists invited to perform their letters at the Global Girl Leading conference will also be professionally photographed, and their portrait printed onto a large canvas, with a QR code linking to an audio recording of their performance. All schools reaching the final will receive a free set of eight prints for display in their school.
Yes, Letters to Our Daughters is fully subsidised by Mulberry Schools Foundation and so is free to enter for all participating schools.