THE LIT FESTIVAL OF READING AND WRITING FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

The Lit Festival was set up by thirteen enterprising young adults who love writing and reading. The team ran its first festival last November and has just received funding for another festival in 2018. I spoke to some of their committee members about the formation of the festival. “We wanted to help make a difference and to give young people a voice,” Nicole Burke says. “That’s where the idea really came from as we decided that our goal would be best achieved through a reading and writing festival for young people.”

Izzy Tiernan explains: “We were already all part of a writing group with Waterford Youth Arts who met every week for workshops, so we organised extra meetings to plan and prepare. The production meetings were often held every two weeks, and everyone was assigned jobs to do in the meantime.”

Their mentor, Eimear Cheasty helped them fill out the paperwork for a grant from the Arts Council Ireland and they were also sponsored by Poetry Ireland and Irish Rail. “We had a feeling that we would have a good chance in getting the grant because nothing like our festival was available in Ireland,” Joy Curtis says.

They put together a ‘wish list’ and started inviting their favourite authors. Libby Marchant says: “Names such as Stephen King and J.K. Rowling popped up but eventually we narrowed it down to more manageable names as it was only our first year!”

Their speakers included Kevin Barry, Claire Hennessy and Lisa McInerney but the highlight for Nicola Cooney was “Definitely the two open mics which we held over the festival. We had young people who had never performed before, and some who had never written before reading their work to a room full of people. It was incredible to think that we were able to give young people the opportunity to explore their artistic side in an open and creative environment like that.” Watch out for The Lit Festival 2018 in November. www.thelit.eu