New chapter for children’s book festival
A children’s book festival hopes to ignite the imaginations of young people after a difficult 16 months of lockdown.
Boswell Book Festival’s schools and families programme has expanded this year with more on offer for youngsters to enjoy.
The festival, which is normally held in the grounds of Dumfries House near Cumnock, is instead being streamed online this year.
The junior side of the festival will run from Thursday, June 10 to Wednesday, June 16 and will also reflect changes in society; addressing some problems that young people may face.
From comics to podcasts, and so much more in-between, the festival explores what it means to be a young person in the world today through looking at what life was like growing up in other times such as the Ancient Aztecs to the First World War to Nazi Germany and the BosnianWar.
The programme explores how life, love and what we live through now will one day be a future child’s history. It celebrates the joy of storytelling to bring experiences to life.
There’s an expanded programme too in the virtual space that incorporates episodic events and interactive talks.
Festival highlights include the lives of great writers dug up by illustrator Adam Murphy in Corpse Talk: Dead Good Storyteller; double act Mairi Kidd and Tom Morgan-Jones will be introducing young readers to famous Scots who have proved themselves Strong, Brave and True whilst coming from Chicago is graphic novelist Lauren Burke who has depicted the life of civil rights leader Rosa Parks and in an astonishingly honest piece of audio theatre, Slug Love, playwright Jo Clifford describes her journey as a transgender person.
A weekend of live and interactive workshops include author Vivian French and illustrator Julia Vohl encouraging the next generation of biographers to imagine the experiences of the coachman who took Boswell & Johnson on their famous Hebridean odyssey.
Meanwhile, artist Fiona Perry leads a T-shirt design class for neurodiverse youngsters to literally wear their identity. Whilst illustrator in residence, American artist Julia Vohl, takes young audiences on flights of fancy as they design their own bird masks.
Curator of the schools and families programme, Janet Smyth, said:“After a year of so many young people feeling isolated, bored and disconnected, the Boswell Book Festival is an opportunity to come together to celebrate our lived experiences - from the mundane to the dramatic - and how our stories are the glue connecting us to one another as well as to those who have gone before and those who will come after. The festival events are the perfect balance of fun-facts, escapism and the power of the imagination.”