Stories into Schools Programme

What was the first book you remember changing the way you thought about something?

Which book had the biggest effect on your life?

More than likely it is a book you read as a child, or one that was read to you.

Children’s stories are an incredibly important part of development because they allow us to visit worlds we might never see otherwise - developing empathy.

They help us to  work through the scary parts of life in a safe space to prepare us for doing it in the real world.

There is a growing body of evidence which illustrates the importance of reading for pleasure for both educational purposes as well as personal development (cited in Clark and Rumbold, 2006).

Reading enjoyment has been reported as more important for children’s educational success than their family’s socio-economic status (OECD, 2002)

Evidence suggests that reading for pleasure is an activity that has emotional and social consequences (Clark and Rumbold, 2006).

Sadly, levels of reading for pleasure amongst our children are now at the lowest they've ever been (National Literacy Trust, 2024).

Here at Step into Stories with Bewdley Festival we aim to bring the love of story back to our children by providing high quality, low cost access to amazing authors, poets, storytellers and illustrators in order to inspire a love of stories.

We had a very successful first year in April 2023 with fantastic middle grade authors such as MG Leonard, Serena Patel, Simon James Green and Chrissie Sains, picture books authors Clare Helen Welsh and Giles Trigg, poets Attie Lime and Joshua Seigal, comic book author/illustrator Neill Cameron and storytellers Ian Douglas and Susan Tumnus. We are aiming to recreate this success on April 12th 2025, but this time we want to go bigger!

We want to get authors in front of as many children as possible, so to that end we are launching Stories into Schools! We'd like to provide authors to our local schools here in Bewdley, so that even children who may not be able to make the festival, are able to benefit from the wonder of stories.

That's why we need your help. We are a charity that relies on donations and sponsors. We are very lucky to have Edshed sponsoring our festival again this year. But to get our schools programme up and running we will need enough funds to pay our authors for running their school workshops. If you can help, even with a small amount, we can help our schools deliver an inspiring experience to our children.