Latest Development News

Ilkley Literature Festival ‘Authors in Schools’ programme

Our ‘Authors in Schools’ Programme gives children of all ages the opportunity to meet a wide range of children’s and young people’s authors. We work closely with our partner schools and Bradford and Leeds Library Services to develop events which enthuse and engage children, from large events for whole year groups and smaller creative writing workshops.

This year we worked with our partner schools to deliver 16 events in seven schools for 1300 children, almost double the number in 2010.

Schools events don’t just take place during the Festival, we work year round with schools, initiating new projects whenever we can.

The year, for example, we worked with Laisterdyke Business and Enterprise College to enable young people at the school to organise their own literature event. The pupils developed a format for the event, managed the budget, decided on a target audience, produced the marketing materials and supported the delivery of the event on the day.

They decided to invite Stephen Waterhouse – a children’s book illustrator – to their school and invited children from two local primary schools to come and hear him. Stephen delivered a hugely engaging workshop which was well received by both the visiting children who had a wonderful time – and their teachers. The Laisterdyke pupils did a wonderful job looking after their young visitors and really impressed everyone with their planning and management of the event.

Young People Review the Festival

We’ve had some fantastic reviews by young people sent to us. If you’d like to know what they think of the Festival and Festival authors …> read more.

Cathy Cassidy

In May we worked with Laisterdyke Business and Technology College in Bradford to host a visit by Cathy Cassidy, author of 15 books for teens and pre teens. We have an ongoing parnership with Laisterdyke  who’ve hosted four author visits since 2009 and the event was attended by Laisterdyke Year 7 students along with Year 6 children from three of the school’s feeder primaries.

The children were invited to dress as characters from Cathy’s books with prizes for the best costumes.

Chapeltown Children’s Centre

One of our priorities is to open up the Festival to children, families and communities who have not previously visited. In partnership with Artworks Bradford, we developed a writing and crafts programme for families at Chapeltown Children’s Centre. The programme was jointly delivered by children’s author Trish Cooke and artist Sandra Whyles, and over a 6 week period, children and parents had the opportunity to invent and write stories and make characters. The programme culminated in a visit to the Festival’s children’s weekend.

Hello Mum

We work in partnership with a number of schools in the region and have developed a strong ‘authors in schools’ programme. As part of her visit to the Festival in 2010, Bernardine Evaristo gave a creative writing workshop for boys at Roundhay School in Leeds. The workshop was themed around her children’s recent book – Hello Mum – a novella whose narrator is a 14 year old boy growing up on a London estate. The boys produced some excellent work and were each presented with a copy of the book.

Highlights from 2010

Our Audience Development and Outreach worker, Dawn Cameron, had a very successful year building the Festival’s relationship with schools from the local area.

Here are some highlights:

We were delighted that over 700 school students had the chance to attend events held in West Yorskhire schools, including whole year group readings and smaller workshops designed to develop children’s creative writing skills.

We were able to set up ten author visits- and that looks set to double in 2011!

Several of the schools we worked with in 2012 had never previously hosted Festival events.

We were able to work with Bradford Children’s University, which encourages children whose families don’t have the experience of higher education to see it as an option for their future, to support a visit to the Children’s Festival by children and parents accompanied by University staff.

We worked with Leeds Children’s University to support a visit to the Children’s Festival by children who’d taken part in the ILF sponsored creative writing group.

We recruited 34 Young Ambassadors from Roundhay School (Leeds), Ilkley Grammar School and Laisterdyke Business and Enterprise College (Bradford). Our Young Ambassadors’ roles include feeding into programming ideas; spreading the word about Festival events to their friends and school mates; coming to Festival events to see for themselves and feeding back and writing reviews.

Writing groups are currently taking place at Bradford Junior University and in Ilkley.