Between Wednesday 5th March and Friday 7th March, The Hundred of Hoo Academy held its very first literary festival, a celebration of language and the ways in which it permeates our everyday lives.
On Wednesday, our LitFest got started with workshops run by Indigo and Lydia — Youth Poet Laureate winners in respective age categories for the ‘Medway River Lit’ Competition along with adult, professional writer and poet Michi Masumi, in which students collaborated to create poetic canvases for display in Hoo Library. Students crafted literary baubles by recycling old books, and competed with their peers to become champions of our Fiction Orienteering challenge.
World Book Day is always highly anticipated by our academy community, with staff and Sixth Form students dressing as characters from much-loved books, and students vying to guess who’s who. This year was bigger than ever! A group of students spent time in Hoo Library with local librarian, Belinda, where they explored the joy of reading for pleasure. In a pacey ‘speed dating with books’ activity, pupils excitedly explored new reads. Elsewhere, GCSE students enjoyed a theatre representation of Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth ‘, whilst others experienced Willy Russell’s ‘Blood Brothers’ on stage.
We ran a creative writing workshop and had a fascinating visit from bestselling author Dan Freedman, who is best known for his popular series of football novels in which Jamie Johnson aims to become the greatest player in the world. Whilst Dan’s novels have reportedly helped children to become less reluctant readers, we were also interested to hear about how Dan has used his skills of literacy, dedication and discipline to become successful in his field, whether now as an author, or in the past when he was managing editor for The Football Association.
On Friday, LitFestHoo took a careers-focused twist, engaging members of our local community in student-led interviews that explored how literacy is a valuable part of so many workplaces. We are grateful to Bauvill, Rochester LitFest, LAT, New Alliance and Show Media for giving us their time, as students of all year groups took so much away from their conversations about their future life choices.
We are particularly proud of the aspiration that our first literary festival has generated; one student even shared that they have learned how to get their own poetry published, having been inspired by LitFestHoo!