Welcome to
Papertown -
Read, Write, Submit
Discover the power and joy of writing
Ignite and channel your creativity, and advocate for yourself and the people and issues you care about, through writing.
Connect with a community of young writers
From Ghana to Nigeria, and all across Africa, we’re building a continent-wide community of young writers.
Why we exist and delight in what we do
TO NURTURE THE LOVE OF WRITING IN YOUNG PEOPLE
Papertown Imaginarium was created primarily for the child who loves to write - to give him/her everything he/she needs to keep doing what he/she enjoys doing:
A place that welcomes, encourages and celebrates their writing
An audience for their stories, poems, essays and creative endeavors.
Tips and notes that they can use to improve their writing.
Prompts and writing exercises that give them ideas to write about
Tutor-guided review process to help them refine and improve what they’ve written.
TO SUPPORT WRITING EDUCATION
Beyond working with individual young writers directly through our website and writing programs, we work to support and improve the general state of writing education. Our work to support writing education involves working with schools to supplement curriculum-based academic writing, which generally focuses on correct usage of words in tandem with grammar, spelling and punctuation.
We believe that pupils and students can learn all that the academic writing curriculum is designed to teach them if they are able to engage with writing beyond rigid, technical structures.
And so we work with schools and writing instructors to deliver programs (like School Press Clubs and Literacy Week Projects) that help pupils and students engage with writing as an insightful, powerful and fun tool for self-expression, channelling creativity and exploring issues (personal and public, big and small, real and imagined).
By working with schools in this way we are able to help a larger pool of young people benefit from the gains of writing.
TO DRIVE THE CREATION OF LITERARY CONTENT FOR YOUNG PEOPLE WRITTEN BY YOUNG PEOPLE
We’re trying something new at Papertown Imaginarium… allowing children and young people write their own stories.
If you have ever interacted with children, you’d know how fascinating, wild, unfiltered and unburdened their imaginations are. There are no limitations, boundaries or impossibilities in their minds. Everything is possible and nothing is impossible. Knowing this about children and young people, we asked ourselves, would children make better writers of children’ stories? Would children better enjoy content written by people who see the world and things as magically as they themselves do? These are the questions we’re exploring through our Great Literary Experiment… to see what happens when children and young people are given the freedom and space to share their minds with an audience that gets them. And to give children the pleasure of consuming literary content created by their fellow dreamers.
Beyond entertaining young readers, our Great Literary Experiment aims to inspire young people. Having grown ups in the world to look up to is great, but what about having people who are as young as you applying themselves in exciting ways and turning the same kind of wacky imagination that you have into things of value? Wouldn’t that be even more inspiring? At Papertown Imaginarium we believe that young people are not too young to explore all that they can be and do through writing, to explore all the places their writing can take them. We believe that the best time to start, especially when it comes to engaging and exploring one’s imagination and creativity, is as children… when EVERYTHING is possible; when their imaginations are the most magical!
Why Writing?
While it may seem that Papertown Imaginarium is on a mission to make professional writers out of every child in Africa, we do not aim or presume to be able to do this. Our focus on writing is born out of our understanding of the impact that writing can have, and the skills that can be gained through writing, which can be transferred to several aspects of human endeavour.
The process of fiction writing generally involves coming up with an idea, selecting the right words and ordering them in the right sequence that brings that idea, your imagination, to life in the mind of another.
And then there’s non-fiction writing, which also entails a deep thought process - understanding the topic, properly researching the points and presenting your idea in a systemic, coherent way that elicits understanding of the points by other people.
Teaching young people to be able to go through these processes is a powerful way of teaching them to communicate, and being able to communicate effectively is integral to all human endeavors.
It is this understanding of what goes into creating a well-thought, impactful piece of writing (including the revision process), and our understanding of the gains of being able to successfully go through the entire process that drive us to nurture writing in young people.
Meet the team behind Papertown
Imaginarium
We are a small group of people with varying but complementary interests and skills, united by our commitment to fostering creative writing among young people everywhere in Africa. We are always interested in meeting and welcoming writing enthusiasts, writers, poets, editors, illustrators, designers, and other creative people who share our interest and would like to contribute to helping young Africans explore their interest in writing!
Andrew Nana Yaw Berchie
Andrew Berchie is the tech visionary at Papertown Imaginarium. Before he joined the team, we were stuck on the analogue way of delivering our service - through physical creative writing sessions. While these sessions created great opportunities for us to meet physically, it limited the number of writers we could work with. Now, thanks to Andrew’s vision and support, we are able to work with young writers all over Africa!
Andrew is a graduate of Bath University, with a Masters’ in Chemical Engineering. When he is not contributing his expertise at Papertown, he is busy growing his business, Bargain Moto.
Chichenma Fortune
Chichenma Fortune is the general dreamer at Papertown Imaginarium, conceptualizing creative ways to get young people to express themselves and explore the world through writing, and ways for young writers to make the most of their writing. She also manages the general operations of Papertown.
Fortune is a graduate of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), and the Nigerian Law School. She practised as a lawyer in Nigeria for 10 years and later became a PMI Certified Associate Project Manager. She received training in entrepreneurship through the Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) Entrepreneurship Forum, and studied Comprehensive Creative Writing with the UK’s Writers’ Bureau.
Jamila Adamu Lisu
Jamila Lisu is a supporting editor at Papertown Imaginarium. She is an avid reader and brings her love for stories and the general world of make-belief to reviewing stories written by our young writers. Her eagle eyes are very sharp at picking out typographical and grammatical errors our writers may have missed, so that the stories we share are technically correct! She also supports our physical writing projects in Nigeria.
Jamila is a graduate of Ahmadu Bello University, with a Masters of Law from Queen Mary, University of London. She has been a practising lawyer in Nigeria since 2014, through her own law firm, Firmus Legal. When she is not reviewing and editing submissions at Papertown or lawyering, she loves to engage in spirited conversations and bringing people together!