Intergenerational Short Story Writing Contest
-
by
Gulnur Salih
As part of the Heritage Project, we held a creative writing competition called “Intergenerational Short Story Writing Contest” with the participation of two Turkish supplementary schools.
The Topic of the Contest: Turkish Cypriots work, leisure, entertainment, social life they had in the UK.
The rationale behind the contest was to help build a bridge between the younger and the older generations of Turkish Cypriots through storytelling with students interviewing their elders or finding photos or objects and use these as the basis of their stories.
Entries:
Both Hornsey Ataturk School and Rauf R Denktas Turkish School’s students learners attended to the story writing contest.
Both schools were sent a brief about what is expected of the school and the students. They were also sent a detailed guideline on how to write their stories. A total of 21 entries (12 from Hornsey Ataturk School and 9 from Rauf R Denktas School) were sent to the Heritage Officer via email.
Gift vouchers to the winners:
£50 for the winner,
£30 for the second place, and
£20 gift voucher for the third one.
Selection Process:
A selection committee was formed consisting of:
Dr. Alex Goodall (Dept. of History, UCL),
Madura Tilve (Dept. of History, UCL),
Dr. Papatya Alkan-Genca (TCCA),
and Gulnur Salih (TCCA).
A rubric was prepared so that the stories could be evaluated objectively. The evaluation criteria consisted of content (originality of ideas, development of characters, use of dialogue, point of view, irony, symbolism), organisation (structure, paragraphs, coherence, cohesion of ideas), language and style (range of vocabulary, spelling, punctuation, capitalisation, narrative techniques, use of literary devices), and context (cultural relevance or significance).
Exhibiting stories and Announcing the Winners:
The winning entries were announced during the Community Day held at the TCCA premises on 30 April 2023.
The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places were displayed in their entirety; extracts from all entries were also exhibited along with the photographs provided by the entrants.
The winner of the contest: Gulsen Erisir (Rauf R Denktas School);
Second: Amelia Owczarczyk (Hornsey Ataturk School),
Third: Nazar Suleyman (Hornsey Ataturk School).
The winner was presented her gift voucher during the Community Day in our centre.
Second Ceremony was hold at the Rauf Denktas School on 20 May 2023 in the evening in front of 150 people; just before the theatre play. A brief information was given to the audience about the story telling contest and the Turkish Cypiots in London – Heritage Project. We announced Gulsen Erisir and presented her certificate of achievement. Gulnur Salih thanked to the school for their collaboration and presented a certificate of a participation and their £500 cheques to the school’s headteacher, Ms Meryem Biricik.
Photographs were taken with the winner and the head teacher in front of the story entries display.
We will hold another ceremony at Hornsey Ataturk School
Other winners will be presented their certificate of achievement at their schools and also school will be presented a certificate of participation and their £500 cheques on 11 June 2023.
Next Step
We have contacted Hackney Archives and had a preliminary agreement to exhibit both the Short Story Contest entries and the other exhibition materials at their premises.
