Are you care experienced and aged 4-25 years? Would you like to get creative, be heard and celebrate your voice and imagination?
Our competition is for YOU!
The Voices 2024 Creative Writing Competition is open, so get your thinking cap on and prepare to submit your song, short story, poem, rap or any other form of creative writing you like.
Need some ideas?
As we finalise details and get ready to launch, take a look at our inspiration page for a sneak peek into some of our past Voices competitions.
What can you win?
Our 24 shortlisted finalists will be invited to our exclusive Awards Ceremony in London, where we’ll have some fantastic prizes up for grabs. We’ll reveal more details in the coming weeks, so look out for those.
Sign up to be a shortlisting volunteer
Each year our competition is supported by dozens of volunteers, who each give up a small amount of time to read some of the entries we receive and provide their scores to help us find our top entrants.
You don’t need to have any special expertise to help us shortlist entries – just an interest in creative writing and a full briefing will be provided.
You can sign up to be a shortlisting volunteer.
Thank you to our sponsor, Cadence Innova
Cadence Innova
is the go-to SME for public services transformation who discover, design, deliver positive change.
As trusted advisors to central government, local government, rail and road, and suppliers to government, Cadence Innova’s mission is to inspire and enable customers to deliver services that make peoples’ lives better, communities more connected and enterprises more sustainable.
Coram Voice Awards event
In previous years, Voices has been supported by a number of big names, including Doctor Who star Peter Capaldi. Judges have included Lauren Child, Ashley John-Baptiste, Mr Gee, Paolo Hewitt, Rick Flo, Christel Dee, Paul Torday and many others.
News on our February 2024 event is coming soon!
How does the competition work?
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Coram Voice is a leading children’s rights organisation, championing the rights of children in care and care leavers. We get young voices heard in decisions that matter to you and work to improve your life thorough our advocates, our helpline and work such as A National Voice. The Voices writing competition is a creative way for you to tell us about your experiences.
Every year the Voices writing competition chooses a theme. Past themes have included ‘Dreams’, ‘Growing Up’, ‘What makes you Proud?’, ‘New Beginnings’ and ‘Who makes you Happy?’.
You can enter any written content of 500 words or under in any form. This could be inspiring stories, poems, raps, articles or anything else that fits the theme. The top rated writing then shortlisted for our awards ceremony with winners selected for the different categories based on ages.
As well as being a celebration and showcase of the creativity, talent and imagination of children in care and care leavers, Voices also aims to improve understanding of the experience of care by giving care-experienced young people the chance to tell your own stories.
Since it begun, the Voices competition has shared the experiences of 100s of children in care and care leavers who have entered.
Want to get involved?
You can find out more and enter via our website.