National Year of Reading – Canterbury Children’s Literature Festival

Katy
0:11

Hi, I'm Katy.

Ali
0:12

Hi, I'm Ali.

Katy
0:13

And welcome to Mostly Book Talk.

Ali
0:15

We have a very timely interview as part of our National Year of Reading series with Bex Hughes, who is the co-founder of Bookshop Crawls CIC. And this is the second year of a new project, which is the Canterbury Children's Literature Festival. Which is happening on Friday the 10th to Sunday, the 12th of July. And in the week before that, there's lots of activities for schools as well that they're running.

Katy
0:43

Yeah. So if you're in the Canterbury area near there, the weekend of the 10th and 12th of July, go and look on their website. But if you're listening to this after the 10th and 12th of July, then you can put it in your diary for around this time next year, I think. They seem to be I've probably just signed them up for doing another year, haven't I? Yeah. Oh well. That's fine. Oh well. But don't feel you shouldn't listen to it because there's also really interesting things about bookshop crawls, which if you like books, you might be tempted by. Enjoy.

Ali
1:16

We are delighted to welcome Bex Hughes from Bookshop Crawls CIC and also the founder of Canterbury Children's Literature Festival. So welcome. Welcome. Tell us a little bit about Bookshop Crawl and then tell us what we're mainly talking about today because that's coming up really soon is the Canterbury Children's Literature Festival.

Bex
1:36

Yes. So Bookshop Crawls UK is a thing that I've been running for the last decade accidentally. Asked some people on Twitter if they wanted to come to some bookshops, and it somehow turned into 16 events a year around the country with other book lovers. So that's lovely and its own wonderful thing. And when we were coming to celebrate our 10th year, I said to my husband Rhys, who's also my co-founder, what do you think we should do for our 10th year? thinking, oh, have a party and a cake. And he said, Why don't we found a children's literature festival for Canterbury?

Katy
2:03

It's just a small little thing, little side project. Yeah.

Bex
2:06

People's been saying for a while that he thought it was strange that there wasn't anything specifically for books. There's a great festival in Canterbury, but it's not specifically books and it's not there's nothing specifically for children relating to literature. So we thought there's a gap, let's fill it. And that was last year. And now we're about to have year two. Yeah, next week. So tell what date does it start? So the main festival weekend runs from Friday the 10th till Sunday the 12th of July. So it's three days. And then we've got the whole week before that, we're in schools, taking authors into schools, doing events in 14 different local schools and a youth group as well this year. So we've got a full from the 6th to the 12th is the whole range of it, but the main public events are 10th to the 12th. And you got coming along? We have so many people coming along. We have over 40 events over the main festival weekend. So we've got everything from storytelling panto day mama G is coming to do a wonderful story time. We've got Sophie Henn coming to do a Happy Hills draw along. Thiago Di Marez, who came last year as well, was a big hit. He's returning this year with his new book. We've got a headline event for the first year. Last year we didn't have a headliner. This year we've got AF Stedman and a world of scandal event, which is going to be just incredible. We're so excited about that. That was a one we thought we would never get. And then we asked and she said yes.

Katy
3:19

So that was very and have you got a nice big venue for that?

Bex
3:22

We do. We have a uh 500-ish seater, lovely old hall, which is a courtesy of one of our partners that we are really lucky to work with the King's School in Canterbury. They've got some brilliant venues, which we're really lucky to be able to use. It is a great place in terms of venues. We are a multi-venue festival, so we work across 11 different venues in Canterbury and the wider district. So it's a bit of travel around and get to see new places and stuff. We've got a lot of historic buildings we use, we've got a lot of outdoor spaces that we do outdoor events in because we try to focus on stories in a lot of different ways. We've tried to be accessible with have a very strong focus on neurodiversity from the beginning of our festival. And we've always tried to do stuff that's a bit unconventional. So it's very interactive. It's places you can make a lot of noise. We've also got quiet spaces. We've got events where you're outdoors and you're moving around and you're doing bug hunts and you're building things. And it's just it's a lot of fun. And it's really nice to be able to provide opportunities for local families and children to get to meet all these amazing people that do amazing things and interact with them in different ways. How are you running that? Is that with an army of volunteers? It is with an army of volunteers. Yes, we have amazing volunteers. We've been really lucky. It is, for the most part, just me and Reese doing all of the logistics and planning. We've got a team of directors as well who are varyingly involved, but the festival for the most part is me saying yes to far too many things and Reese trying to calm me down.

Katy
4:46

So you mentioned like some of the younger ones. How old does it go up to? So just so people know when who should look. It's picture books and story times right up to YA.

Bex
4:57

So we have Nathanael Lessore coming. Yeah. He's coming to do an event. He came last year, it was amazing. We've debut author called Steve Blackman, whose book Zero Override, has just come out. It's about it's like Alex Ryder meets iRobot, is how it's been described to me. Well I'm very excited to read it. But he writes for sort of 10 to 4 that that sort of age group. So I would say probably we say all ages, but the authors we've got probably up to about 14. Yeah.

Katy
5:22

And how do people get tickets? Where do they find them? Where should they go if they're thinking, oh, I'm near Canterbury, I'm in Canterbury?

Bex
5:29

It's CanterburyKidslitfest.co.uk, and our whole programme is up there. And that's also where they can go to get involved if anybody feels like being a last-minute volunteer. We are happy to have Han. So yeah, it's CanterburyKidsLitfest.co.uk for everything, tickets and involvement related.

Ali
5:46

Brilliant. So this is the second year. So you've got a little bit of an idea what's coming because you've done it once before. And it's also the national year of reading. So I just wondered if what are your any hopes and thoughts about the national year of reading?

Bex
5:59

We are working. We've got a festival patron now for the first time, which is the amazing author Lucy Strange. She's local to us, which is great for us. But we are working with her because we both would love to see the National Year of Reading provoke more of a change in like attitudes, not just for children, but also for their parents, role models, people in their lives. Because I think, especially in our area, we see a lot that sometimes children are picking it up from their parents that reading's not that important, that it doesn't have that much effect. And we are really trying hard to get through that barrier and be present the idea that reading is as important as so many other things, as good dental hygiene or more. But as basic things as that, this actually is something that can affect people's children's lives, and they need to know that, we feel. So we've been working this first stage of that is we've got a reading role models photo competition. We've had a read with your dad for Father's Day thing going on, where people have sent us pictures reading with their dad, and we're gonna turn that into some kind of something as yet in the works to hopefully sort of be a bit of a outreach to parents who would be interested if they knew how important it was. We're hoping that will feed into what the National Year of Reading is trying to do with encouraging children to read into things that they're interested in, expanding the view of reading as a narrow thing, which I think is the National Year of Reading has been doing a great job with. We're hoping to push that a little bit further out to reluctant parents, shall we say?

Katy
7:23

Yeah. And how do you contact parents? Obviously, you're working with schools. Are schools helping you make parents aware of it?

Bex
7:29

Or yes, for us, the school's outreach has been the biggest development from this from last year to this year. Last year we had one day of schools events, this year we've got five. Last year we worked with three schools, this year it's 15. So schools are a big thing for us. The youth clubs that we're working with also are a youth club that work with more disadvantaged families, and they are helping us in that way as well to connect with people that we wouldn't naturally connect with. We've always had at the heart of our aims for the festival to be accessible to people who wouldn't come to festivals, who wouldn't think festivals were for them. And how to do that is obviously a work in progress, but we will basically work with anyone who is interested, or we've got a lot of our supporters who are great at having connections and connecting us with people that they think we should be connected with. So we've made a lot of connections that way. So yeah, at the moment it's schools in youth groups, but we're always very happy to hear anybody's ideas about other ways to reach people.

Katy
8:25

What was your experience in the first year? And what did you learn last year that you've done differently this year in terms of getting people involved?

Bex
8:31

So many things, primarily from the schools that we went to, seeing the reaction of children and we did bookstalls after school, and so many of the parents walked past us clearly thinking, I'm not gonna have to buy anything, this has nothing to do with me. And then their children came running out, I've just floated shit over there. She's written all these books, you have to go and buy them all now. And they're all going out with piles of books and clearly quite bemused by what just happened to them. But that was a really important thing for us because we were like, these are where the kids are that want the thing, but their parents probably don't know they want the thing because they've never been exposed to it or not experienced it. So then being able to provide that is a really big first step for us, I think, in in reaching some people. And then as we do more things, we're just keeping our eyes open to see what the response is. And we have a lot of feedback from people. Someone will come up to me, I guarantee you, over the weekend and say, Oh, have you thought about doing an event here or have you thought about doing this there? And what about this group? So I write all of that down and then we'll take it forward for next year.

Ali
9:26

And then does Rhys just take that note away and burn it? Yes.

Bex
9:30

Rhys says no, you can't do that this year. It has to wait. There are only 24 hours in a day, and you do have other things to do.

Katy
9:38

What's the bookshop situation? Are you working with a bookshop? Is there bookshops in Canterbury?

Bex
9:43

Actually, we have three this year. So because this year we've extended out to Canterbury District, we also have Herm Bay. So we have the Little Green Bookshop in Herm Bay, which we're working with. They're running a couple of events and the book sales for those events. And then for the rest of the book selling, we split it between Waterstones in Canterbury and Chapters, Coffee and Bookshops in Surrey, who are they're both our sort of hub, festival hubs. So they have four events a day each on over the festival weekend and are very enthusiastic supporters. So yeah, they do it between them. Nice. There are a quiz book. There is a big Ali knows my quizzes. There is a big kids' bookish quiz on the Friday, yes. So anyone who is local and likes a quiz, we're still looking for teams to come down and test your children's book knowledge. It will be obscure. I love writing a quiz. Never miss an opportunity to write a quiz.

Katy
10:29

I have actually been at book quizzes where authors can't answer the questions about their own books. So there's nothing like a fam that spent time thinking about something, I think. It was also we had, I think we had Nate Lessore on who he was because Greenwich do a book quiz with their school book clubs each year. And I think they invite an author in to help run it and do a sort of presentation for the kids who've taken part. And I think there's a round in that on the author that's invited. And I think he said, didn't he, Ali, that he was a bit stumped by this.

Bex
11:02

I would have expected nothing less from Nate. That's true.

Katy
11:05

Oh, brilliant. Okay, we will try and get this out really quickly. If you want to join in, they should go to your website. What about the book crawl stuff? Where did they come for that?

Bex
11:14

So bookshop crawl is bookshopcrawl.co.uk and it's got all the details of all the places that we're bookshop crawling in the upcoming months. It's got a volunteers page as well because we do have volunteers to help out on bookshop crawls, especially our bigger ones like the London one that happens every February. And also we've got a membership community for Bookshop Crawl where people can pay two or five pounds a month to be part of the community to support the running of the CIC. And they get various different, they get like a monthly members' blog, they get discounts on things, they get to be part of our online community and do different challenges, read-alongs, read a thons, book clubs, stuff like that. So we have all of that. It's all accessible on bookshopcrawl.co.uk. And we also run regular bookish groups and book swaps in London, Kent and Edinburgh in bookshops. Mostly actually at the moment, the London one is between Bard Books and St. James's Park, while the weather novels.

Katy
12:03

So one last question. What's actually involved if somebody is going to come on a bookshop crawl with you? What do they do?

Bex
12:11

What they do is they get to meet other lovely bookish people and we bill it as a socially anti-social event because it's often attracts people like me who have social anxiety or some kind of awkwardness around the idea of going out and meeting strangers and actually making friends, but would really like to make friends. And a bookshop call is a really nice place to do that because we all have books in common. We all want to spend an afternoon in bookshops. So they'll come, they'll meet other people, myself or somebody else who has some geographical knowledge, will have devised an itinerary and take them around a planned route of usually five to eight different bookshops, including indie secondhand charity specialist chains, all sorts of niche things. And it's just really nice. It's really relaxed. Quite often bookshops offer us a little peek behind the scenes or a little discount or a little freebie or something nice, which is just makes it a bit more special. And then we always have a stop for cake mid-afternoon because cake is important. It is important. And yeah, it's just it's usually three and a half or four hours on an afternoon, depending on where we are and how many bookshops there are.

Ali
13:11

I think I did Richmond one year.

Bex
13:14

Yes, Richmond is lovely. I'm biased because I grew up in that area, but Richmond is one of my favourite places to bookshop call because the bookshops are just so nice and so excited every time we go in and just lovely. And it's not a long way to walk. They're all quite neat. Exactly most together, which we do try to do. We try to make it not too. I did do one in Edinburgh recently, and that was a lot of hills. It was absolutely lovely. Fantastic day because Edinburgh's amazing for bookshops, but just a lot of surprise hills where you'd forgotten there was a hill and oh dear, another hill.

Katy
13:42

It was a workout as well as a book exploration.

Bex
13:44

It is good exercise. It's good. We do one as part of Bristol Walk Fest in May, which is does have longer walks in it because it's part of a walking festival. So it's a lovely way to combine. If you're a person who walks and loves bookshops, that's perfect. Sounds it does sound perfect.

Katy
13:57

It does sound very good. And do you do children's books as well as adult books or are they all mixed bookshops?

Bex
14:02

I always forget that not everybody reads children's books. So I quite often take people to children's bookshops without telling them they're going to be going into a children's bookshop and they're like, oh look, this is a children's bookshop. I'm like, just it's fine, you'll find something, it'll be all right. So yeah, it's always a mixture because yeah, I don't recognise that people don't read children's books, unfortunately. So I'm sorry if you're a person who's neither do we have to neither do we.

Katy
14:24

We're not very good at that. Oh, it sounds brilliant. Thank you. I'm very yeah, I'm very tempted with the to join one of your bookshop crawls. I will go and have a look and and see. Ali and I are planning a virtual bookshop tour, children's bookshop tour next year, where we talk to the owners or people who are in charge of the children's collections in independent bookshops up and down the country and share them on the podcast. Amazing. That's our plan for next year, so much as we plan.

Bex
14:51

That's brilliant. I love that.

Katy
14:53

Yeah. So brilliant. Thank you very much and good luck, and hope it goes really well. And hope the sun shine shines on you because it sounds like some of your activities are outside and it would be really good.

Bex
15:04

But if it could shine just moderately, wouldn't it? Under 30 degrees preferably.

Katy
15:08

Yeah. Between 25 and 30. Exactly.

Bex
15:11

That's what we would like.

Katy
15:12

Yeah. So brilliant. Thank you.