Target reached!
If we reach our goal, we will be able to expand our programme of events, so that we ...
Stroud Book Festival Fundraiser 2020
Stroud, England, United Kingdom
Aim
Thank you everyone for helping us reach our goal, to stage a FREE, online Festival for us all to enjoy this November!
THANK YOU EVERYONE for helping us reach our goal!
Can you help us do something amazing?
This year, we are taking our Festival entirely online for the first time. We are doing this because in these challenging times, Stroud Book Festival is too important a forum – for culture, for entertainment, for education, and for engagement with the issues of today – to allow the current pandemic to prevent it from taking place.
Now more than ever, we value books as a vital lifeline to a world outside the bubbles in which we have been living, and to ideas that empower, entertain, promote diversity and creativity in our society, and allow us to visit other lives and other places beyond our own experience.
And we value the exceptionally creative place that is Stroud too, and with our online Festival have a chance to show off all the wonderful things our town is made of to an audience way beyond Gloucestershire.
This year, from 4th – 8th November, we will bring you a host of live events, streamed from our Stroud-based studios on our YouTube channel. There you’ll encounter a diverse mix of interviews, readings, conversation and debate, and questions from you, our audience. Each day we will also show specially commissioned films featuring books and authors.
Why are we crowdfunding this year?
As we celebrate our 5th birthday, we believe the best possible cultural response to these difficult times is to make the 2020 Stroud Book Festival free and accessible to all. However, without the income from ticket sales, the inevitably reduced income from sponsors and the costs of making the online festival as compelling as possible, we need your help to do it.
Our crowdfunding campaign aims to raise at least £10,000.
We will spend this money on funding a terrific and diverse programme of live events over the five days of the Festival.
We are delighted to announce the first tranche of events: Joanna Trollope, Gloucestershire-born, bestselling novelist; Kei Miller, award-winning Jamaican poet; Raynor Winn, author of “The Salt Path”, in conversation with bestselling Stroud novelist Rachel Joyce; Jonathon Porritt, prominent environmental campaigner; Cath Kidston, renowned designer and businesswoman; Dara McAnulty, 16-year-old author, naturalist and environmental activist; and Michael Cashman, actor, former EastEnders cast member, and co-founder of Stonewall.
The 2020 Festival will also include a special tribute event to Stop Ecocide founder, Polly Higgins.
The 2020 online Festival will continue its partnership with Stroud Short Stories, whose 20th event will be hosted on 8th November with the theme of 'Disruption'.
The Festival will also feature a Schools’ Day for local primary schools, and an exciting range of children’s events for all ages, including a weekend event with Ben Miller, children’s author and TV comedian of “Armstrong and Miller” fame.
If you support us, you will be helping us to celebrate both the essential and enduring role that books and authors play in our lives. You will also be supporting the rich cultural character of Stroud itself, and the many wonderful organisations that we value working with including Transition Stroud, the Museum in the Park, the Subscription Rooms, Stroud Library, Lansdown Hall, Stroud Pride and Stroud Valleys Project.
And you will be helping to ensure that everyone can come along to Stroud Book Festival this year, whoever and wherever they are.
A big thank you, and a virtual hug for supporting us!
To thank you for your support we have arranged a fantastic selection of rewards, including VIP Tickets to Stroud Book Festival 2021 and personalised reading recommendations.
Please be as generous as you are able, we appreciate every donation.
You can also show your support by spreading the word about this campaign on Facebook and Twitter, and by telling your friends and contacts.
Help us make Stroud fizz with the joy of books and reading this autumn.
Thank you!
Love, Stroud Book Festival X
This project successfully funded on 31st August 2020