In December 2010, Tim Dick and Catherine Keenan, then journalists at The Sydney Morning Herald, watched Dave Eggers’ deeply inspiring TED talk about 826 Valencia a writing centre for young people in San Francisco. In January 2011, they made the decision to set up a similar writing centre in Sydney.

The Sydney Story Factory was incorporated in February 2011. We held our first volunteer meeting in April and 200 willing people turned up. Later that month, Dick and Keenan attended a course at 826 Valencia, about how to set up and run an organization like 826. With pro bono help from respected creative collective The Glue Society and input from local young people and volunteers, we decided that our shop would be The Martian Embassy and Gift Shop.

Support was also garnered from prominent writers, including Anna Funder, Malcolm Knox, Peter FitzSimons and Markus Zusak. In May 2011, the Sydney Story Factory was launched by the Governor, Professor Marie Bashir, at the Sydney Writers’ Festival, to a capacity crowd.

Pilot programs began at Our Lady of Mt Carmel, Waterloo, in the same month, with our first band of brave volunteers. In Terms 3 and 4, programs were expanded to Alexandria Park Community School and Tempe Public School, which have high populations of students from Indigenous or non-English speaking backgrounds. Feedback from students, teachers, parents and volunteers was overwhelmingly positive.

By July 2011, 100 tutors had been vetted and trained and were ready to start tutoring. In September, a lease was taken on premises at 176 Redfern Street, Redfern, to house the writing centre and shop. The fit-out began in April 2012 and the creation of this amazing space is another story in itself, see below for more details!

The Sydney Story Factory and the Earth’s first Martian Embassy and Gift Shop will be officially opened by Her Excellency, The Governor of NSW, Professor Marie Bashir on July 21. Classes begin straight after that.