Author, Poet and Creative Practitioner
Hello...
I'm Helen Goodbarton, an author, poet and creative facilitator. I have been working creatively my whole life, and writing since 2008.
I write children's stories and have published a book. I also write songs, poetry and short plays.
I'm an experienced drama workshop facilitator and my past work has seen me touring schools in Italy, working for a leading London-based company and creating and running my own business, Sprouts.
About Me
Stage, stories and Sprouts!
I've always had a strong creative streak; initially manifesting itself in art at a young age, and resting upon theatre in my teens. So began my journey to becoming a writer.
It's interesting looking back to my days in youth theatre, then at drama school and into teaching, as I can now see the through-line; the golden thread which I followed, picking up and honing my craft along the way.
Acting
The basis of most of my skills lie in the training I received at Guildford School Of Acting back in 2000.
There I learnt the importance storytelling and creating a piece that works for an audience, which now helps me structure my stories in an entertaining and understandable way.
One of my favourite classes was voice-into-text, where we studied the sounds and emotions of the written words to help understand the context better. It has given me the underlying love of language and poetry that influences all of my writing. The experience of hearing my piece read out loud is as important as the subject matter within it.
The skills of acting and performance also became part of my engaging teaching style
​
Teaching
After graduating from drama school and finding little suitable work, I soon found I had a special skill in engaging young people with learning through drama. After a few years of teaching for a London-based company I moved back to my home town of Nottingham in 2008. Here I established Sprouts, my own young-children's drama company providing after-school, in-school and holiday provisions for primary aged children.
In building up termly resources for Sprouts classes I wrote a large number of original stories, poems and songs, and adapted 24 famous stories into short plays for children, which instilled my love of writing.
After 10 years of building up a successful business I sold the company on to spend more time with my new family.
Writing
Much of my early writing was to create resources for Sprouts but, in 2016, for a collaborative workshop with an illustrator, I wrote a story called The Glowing Snowman. The story felt too good to leave behind and so myself and the illustrator resolved to make it into a children's book! We achieved this in 2017, and now have our own publishing company Sojo & Mouse.
From that point onward I knew that writing was something I needed to pursue further.
More recently, through a personal creative project, I discovered my ability to write good poetry was not limited to quirky children's rhymes. I have since created an anthology of poems and completed a commission for a Street Poem for Nottingham City Council in 2021.
"Helen is a good friend and a creative inspiration with whom I have had the privilege to work. Her imagination, energy and creativity has brought such joy to many both children and us adults/big kids! " - Helen, writer and drama teacher.