Children’s BookFest and Festival of Chichester join forces

SussexWorld

New collaboration

Transcript

00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, group arts citizen at the Sussex Newspapers and also

00:08chairman of the Festival of Chichester. Now really exciting news for the Festival of Chichester,

00:12exciting news for Children's Book Fest in Chichester. We're combining the Children's Book

00:18Fest. It's going to be a really important central thread through the Festival of Chichester this

00:23year, isn't it? Why is that happening? Why are you pleased, Georgina, that we are uniting in

00:27that way for this year's Festival? Yeah, we're delighted. It seems like a really,

00:34a really lovely partnership. We've concentrated for, since 2019, we've concentrated on our schools

00:42programme, really. You know, everything we do is about bringing authors and brand new books into

00:48schools. But we really wanted to be able to reach children in the community, not just the children

00:57that are in the classroom on the day the author comes. You know, we wanted to be able to give

01:01that kind of experience to whoever wanted to come. So we're really excited to have four different

01:10children's events going on during the Festival of Chichester. We've got the Reverend Richard Coles

01:16as well coming for the grown-ups. And yeah, we're just, we're thrilled. And obviously it's such a big

01:21year for the cathedral as well, being this 900 year. So it feels like a real community collaboration.

01:29And these, these festivals are part of the fundraising that you need to do to make the

01:34whole thing work. You have to come up with a staggering £50,000 to make the festival function,

01:40which is a huge challenge, isn't it? But what a wonderful achievement that you do,

01:44because you reach so many schools already, don't you?

01:49Yeah, yeah, we, we're, it's going really well. Yeah, the fund, so the problem is you're almost

01:54a victim of your own success, because the more, the more popular you become, the more money you have

01:58to raise. But it's a really nice problem to have. But the events are really useful because lots of the

02:07speakers volunteer their time for free just to support us. So all the ticket proceeds can go straight

02:13back into the coffers and we translate them straight. And that success, that shows the

02:18fact that the Bookfest is really meeting a need, isn't it? To go back a stage or two,

02:23what is the whole ethos? What's the Bookfest about?

02:28The Bookfest is, so in 2019, our two co-founders, Penny Tomlinson and Sarah Gott, they, they

02:37realised there was a really staggering statistic at the time about the number of

02:42children who grow up in a house that doesn't have, either doesn't have any books or certainly

02:48doesn't have any children's books. And so what they wanted to do was combine the experience of

02:55an author speaking directly to children, and then afterwards presenting them with their very own copy

03:01of their book and personally dedicated. So we have, we do Bognor in February, and we do

03:08Chichester in October. And we, yeah, we have just stacks of authors turning up, going into classrooms,

03:16they talk to the children, then they personally meet each and every one.

03:19And the authors don't struggle to find the authors, presumably.

03:23The authors, they're a very generous soul. You know, they're a bunch of generous souls is what

03:29I'm trying to say. Yeah, so they're, and October is quite a good time for them because there's so

03:33many festivals. So they're sort of on the circuit, on the road, and they love coming to schools.

03:39So many of them say that's their favorite, you know, the big events when you pack out, you know,

03:45like Barnes have a very big program, don't they? And they have huge, but there's something very

03:51intimate. And there's an immediate connection, I think, for authors when they're talking to

03:57the children in their own school. And then they get to chat to them personally about,

04:02and they talk to them about all sorts of things, not just the author's book, you know,

04:05they'll talk about their interests. And it's lovely for you, obviously.

04:08It's lovely for the authors too, to see the benefits that the children gain from this.

04:13It's amazing. Some of the quotes we have, we have quotes from the kids themselves,

04:20but the teachers, the teachers, you know, and teachers have a really hard job, don't they?

04:25Like, it's not getting any easier for those teachers. And they're just, and reading for

04:30pleasure is a huge thing for all of them. They're all trying really hard. But after the author has

04:35been in, the messages we get back are, oh my goodness, you know, the buzz was amazing. The kids

04:40are talking about these books at playtime. They're going home, reading their books. They're, you know,

04:46and of course you have those, those other situations where the things the children

04:51say are heartbreaking, like, I've never owned my own book before, and can I really keep it?

04:56And, and one of, one of the children last year said, could we write a letter to his dad

05:02to prove that it was his book and he didn't have to take it back to the library?

05:06Oh, and that must drive you on. That's the reason you do it, isn't it?

05:12It is. It is. Yeah. It's, it's such a direct, you know, benefit. It's, it's, and, and we,

05:19we talk to schools, obviously, the longer we go on and the more repeat events we do at the same

05:25schools, we, we get to a sense of how the reading, the culture of reading for pleasure is really

05:30positively impacted, uh, the book fest coming into their classrooms. Fantastic. Well, it's such a

05:37brilliant thing that the Festival of Judicial Sister and the Children's Book Fest are working

05:41so closely together this year. Lovely to speak to you and look forward to plenty of collaboration

05:46in the future. Thank you so much. Thanks so much, Phil.

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