HAY FESTIVAL SCRIBBLERS TOUR 2022 REACHES 741 PUPILS ACROSS 24 WELSH SCHOOLS 

Hay Festival Scribblers Tour closed last Friday 18 February after bringing five exceptional YA writers direct to 741 Year 7-10 school pupils across Wales in inspiring free, in-person events hosted at University of South Wales, Swansea University, Aberystwyth University, Cardiff Metropolitan University, and Wrexham Glyndwr University.

Running 7-11 February and 14-18 February, the Scribblers Tour aimed to engage and encourage the next generation in storytelling and conversation, inspiring empathy and creativity. Now in its eleventh year, the tour also gave pupils a chance to experience a taste of life on a university campus.

Compèred by YA writer Jenny Valentine, sessions for Year 7-8 pupils featured interactive activities with poet, playwright and bestselling novelist Kiran Millwood Hargrave and one of the UK’s most respected spoken word artists Steven Camden, while sessions for Year 9-10 pupils were led by actor, writer and director Manjeet Mann and children’s author, performance poet and playwright Joseph Coelho.

In total, 24 schools from across Wales got involved with activities ranging from writing mesostics with Joseph Coelho through to creating their own perilous island adventures with Kiran Millwood Hargrave.

Hannah Rees, teacher at Ysgol Rhydywaun, said: “The pupils enjoyed meeting the authors and had the opportunity to think creatively and develop ideas in different ways that could then be developed later in the classroom.”

Aine Venables, Education Manager at Hay Festival, said: “Every May in Hay-on-Wye thousands of young people join us to meet their writing heroes and our Scribblers Tour takes this a step further by bringing Hay Festival direct to them. In these free Festival days we wanted to start conversations with young people, hear their voices and celebrate the power of writing and reading for pleasure. We were delighted to welcome a star line-up of writers Kiran Millwood Hargrave, Steven Camden, Manjeet Mann and Joseph Coelho, who make for an inspiring team to guide pupils on their creative journeys. We would  like to send a huge thank you to all the universities and the First Campus teams for welcoming us on to their campuses to make the Scribblers Tour possible.”

Hay Festival Scribblers Tour is funded by the Welsh Government and is part of Hay Festival’s wider outreach and education work that includes the free Programme for Schools and the Beacons Project. Over the past year more than 12,000 school pupils have engaged with Hay Festival events live or online with previous sessions available to view free at hayfestival.org/education.

For more information visit hayfestival.org/scribblers/the-scribblers-tour.aspx. And to support Hay Festival by becoming a Hay Festival Friend, Patron or Benefactor, visit hayfestival.org/support-us.

About the speakers

Steven Camden, aka Polarbear, is a poet, playwright and novelist who has performed and collaborated all over the world. Internationally performing his work since 2007, Camden has graced stages from Kuala Lumpur to California via Glastonbury and The Royal Shakespeare Company. His work has featured on BBC Radio 1, 3 and 6. He has written three Young Adult novels for HarperCollins: Tape, It’s About Love, and Nobody Real. His poetry collection Everything all at Once was published in July 2018.

Joseph Coelho is a children’s author, performance poet and playwright based in London. His debut poetry collection, Werewolf Club Rules, was the 2015 winner of the CLPE CLiPPA Poetry Award. His second book, Overheard in a Tower Block, was shortlisted for the 2018 CLPE CLiPPA Poetry Award and is longlisted for the 2019 UKLA Book Awards. His work has poetry and performance at its heart, drawing on over 16 years’ experience running dynamic creative literacy sessions in schools. He aims to inspire young people through stories and characters that they can recognise.

Manjeet Mann is an actor, playwright, screenwriter and director. She is the founder of Run The World – an organization that works with women and girls from marginalized backgrounds and helps to empower them through sport and storytelling. Her latest book is The Crossing, while her previous title, Run, Rebel, was published in 2020 and was the Shadowers’ Choice for the Carnegie Medal.

Kiran Millwood Hargrave is a poet, playwright and bestselling novelist. Her debut novel for children The Girl of Ink & Stars won the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, and the British Book Awards Children’s Book of the Year, both in 2017. Her work has been shortlisted and longlisted for other major prizes including the Costa Award and the CILIP Carnegie Award.

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Hay Festival 2022 takes place 26 May-5 June 2022. Thursday 26 and Friday 27 May will once again be devoted to free programming for schools. Keep up to date with Hay Festival news by signing up to the newsletter or follow the action live on:

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