Special Guest Northern Highlight - Manchester Children's Book Festival

Special Guest Northern Highlight

Kaye Tew, Manchester Children's Book Festival

Can you tell us about the Manchester Children’s Book Festival? 

When Carol Ann Duffy became the Poet Laureate, back in 2009, she came up with the idea of a festival for the children of Manchester.  I ran a schools outreach programme at the time for the English Department at Manchester Met and, after an event for 300 excited inner-city primary school children, she leant over to me and said, “This is our festival audience.”

 I am proud of many of the things we have achieved since our first programme in 2010. We’ve had huge events, with high profile authors and poets, competitions, conferences, exhibitions … but what matters most are the projects that have inspired children from our local communities. 

Can you tell us about the MCBF online events with the Manchester Poetry Library?

With Carol Ann as Creative Director, poetry was always going to be a huge feature in our programming, and it has produced many of our biggest successes. So when the Manchester Poetry Library came into being, we were always going to work closely together.

Our first joint event was the online launch of poet Mandy Coe’s Belonging Street in October last year. This was followed in January with the launch of Valerie Bloom and Ken Wilson-Max’s Stars with Flaming Tails. We produced teaching resources for both of these events and they brought in mixed audiences of teachers, writers and also children.   

 This model is something we hope to continue, it supports teachers, helps to promote book sales and, hopefully, will result in poets being invited into schools to work with children. 

 

What are the 2021 plans for the MCBF?

There are a number of ideas in early planning stages at the moment but, like everyone, I’m waiting to see when we will be able to host big events again. 

 Our next online event takes place in just a couple of weeks.  It will be a schools Q&A with my  Manchester Metropolitan University colleague, the author Alex Wheatle. 

Alex Wheatle and books

I’m working on a series of poetry events with the Manchester Poetry Library and  developing ideas around CPD for teachers and librarians.  Our next event will be the May launch of Manchester-based poet Matt Goodfellow’s latest collaboration with Laura Mucha and Liz Brownlee and Manchester-based illustrator Victoria Wheeler.    

I’m also, right now, working with Read Manchester and Liz Scott on a project around Boy Everywhere by A.M.Dassau, the story of a Syrian family fleeing war-torn Damascus to come to Manchester. This is going to be a great opportunity for schools.  Watch this space …

 

Can you tell us about MCBF’s big book donation?

Summer 2020 was supposed to be the opening of the Manchester Poetry Library, and we had huge plans to bring our local communities into the university to celebrate at our first major city-centre event since 2017.  So it was a big disappointment not to be able to do this. 

 Instead, though, I approached a number of the fantastic publishers we’d worked with over the years and asked them to donate books for us to give out locally. I was astonished at the response - and so were my neighbours, when pallets containing thousands of books were delivered to my tiny, terraced house! (University buildings being closed.)

My old, blind dog Marley and I personally delivered these to various libraries, schools and charities over the summer. It was very rewarding, though a huge amount of work.  So when Read Manchester, who had been running their own book gifting over the summer, asked me to team up with them for the Christmas giveaway, the answer was a resounding YES!  That gifting is ongoing and I hope that our publisher friends will be generous again this summer.

Marley checking the Book Giveaway stock

What, for you, is the spirit of the North?

I think this became evident for me really early on in the MCBF story, when we began to work in partnership with many of the city’s cultural organisations, including libraries.  Working in partnership - as we have with the book giveaway and as we have over the years on projects and events - means we are able to do so much more.    

 To me, that generosity, that willingness to share and to collaborate, which also extends to the local writers and poets I’ve worked with, completely sums up the spirit of the North. I hesitate in a way to call it the ‘Spirit of the North’ because I’m sure that other regions also share these qualities, but I can only speak from my own experience and I’ve found Manchester in particular is a wonderfully joyful and creative place to work.

Book Giveaway Summer 2020 at Stanley Grove Primary Academy

   

 Why is it so important that we continue to support the creative industries in the North?  

Creativity is at the core of everything we do, or at least it should be.  Creative Industries contribute hugely to the economy of the country but there is still a massive imbalance, with the majority of that economic success coming from the South East of the country. 

If the North is to stand a chance of even maintaining the gap, never mind levelling it up, there has to be investment.  Initiatives like Manchester Metropolitan University’s new school of Digital Arts and the Manchester Writing School’s new MA in Publishing will help, as will our indomitable ‘Northern Spirit’. 

 After the events of this last year, it is going to be particularly important, for the future of our local economy and our children, to ensure that we support the creative sector.    

 

What would you like to see from children’s publishing in the North?

It has been enormously exciting that publishing houses like Hachette are establishing Northern offices.  I think that this signals a very real commitment to establishing greater regional diversity which I hope will translate into more opportunities, particularly for the many lesser-known local writers and illustrators from the region. 

 This is important to them but also important to children to see themselves and their region reflected in the books they read and the people who come into their schools to promote them. 

Kaye Tew is Director of Manchester Children’s Book Festival, Department of English at Manchester Metropolitan University

www.mcbf.org.uk

@MCBFestival (Twitter)