A Children's Literature Festival in the Heart of the Garden of England
Our vision for Canterbury Children's Literature Festival is to bring an inclusive, joyful and celebratory experience of books and stories to the area, and show our participants the power that books have to connect, inspire and create new experiences. Studies have shown that the enjoyment of reading is lower than ever before and our festival is designed to help change that.
We need your help to make this happen! Your support will help ensure that we can hire venues for the festival, pay authors, workshop facilitators and speakers to attend, train our volunteers, purchase sensory equipment for those who need it and so many more little things that all mount up to an amazing festival.
Why Canterbury?
Canterbury is a world heritage site with a rich literary history. Authors including Michael Morpurgo, Ian Fleming & AF Steadman have lived or been educated here. Its streets are filled with little reminders of literary links making it a perfect setting to celebrate the joy of stories.
Statistics show that despite this history, East Kent (Canterbury & Thanet) is below the national average in comprehension, reading and writing. Alongside this, a recent National Literacy Trust report has shared the terrible news that only 1 in 3 children aged 5 to 18 from around the UK regularly enjoy reading for pleasure - with the South East of England being the lowest in the country (33.9%).
Studies (and our experience) show that reading has a unique power to build empathy, grow curiosity, and develop an understanding of the world. Our festival will help children to engage with stories in creative ways, utilising drama, crafts, drawing, scavenger hunts and more to suit different children’s learning styles. We want to provide varying ways of creating and interacting with the world of stories to show families that books don’t just belong in school.
This festival is part of our celebration of the 10th year running Bookshop Crawl UK, and will continue the ethos of celebrating and supporting local small businesses, including using our years of experience creating bookshop crawls to run scavenger hunts, bookshop crawls and more throughout the city during the festival, as well as working with local providers for the event itself.
We are a neurodiverse family & will create events that are accessible to as many needs as possible by using physically accessible venues, creating quiet & sensory areas & having ear defenders available, and creating events with varying levels and different ways to interact with the aim of having something for everyone.
We want to encourage celebration of all forms of reading, including audiobooks, graphic novels, picture books & more and will be programming as diverse a programme of book-related events as possible. We have a range of incredible venues in Canterbury lined up to be part of the event and have been in talks with some amazing authors, drama groups and workshop providers already, with lots more planned. Supporters will get to see all of the upcoming goodness first!