R-Words meets Citizen and Story Nation

Several community writing groups have been creating inspiring group poems as part of the R-Words project....

Citizen with the Saheliya Champions

We reflect on our five online Citizen sessions with Saheliya, an organisation which supports and promotes the positive mental health and well-being of Black, minority ethnic, asylum seeker, refugee and migrant women and girls (12+) in...

Snapshots from Spartans

Explore the Zine created by young people at Spartans Alternative School, which uses original photographs and writing to show us a snapshot of their world....

Storytelling at the new Royal Hospital for Children & Young People

This week we're celebrating the first of our in-person Story Nation activities at Sick Kids, with interactive storytelling sessions led by Andy Cannon...

Sign up to The Citizen Collective summer sessions

The next batch of sessions of The Citizen Collective is just around the corner. If you're Edinburgh-based, aged 16-18 and love creative writing, join us!...

How To Make Friends With Floating Heads

Lucy uses this guest blog to reflect on her experience of being part of The Citizen Collective. This community of creative writers have only ever met online: what this might mean for life beyond the Zoom Room?...

World Book Night and Reading Hour

World Book Night is on Friday 23 April, with #ReadingHour taking place between 7-8pm. Find out how we're celebrating this year and how you can get involved....

The Citizen Map of Musselburgh

Explore our map and listen to audio recordings of creative writing by local Musselburgh residents, inspired by the town's sights and sounds....

A teenager’s pandemic

In this guest blog, Hollie from The Citizen Collective shares her view of what it's like to be a teenager living through a pandemic...

Our commitment to accessibility

The Book Festival is moving to a new site, but accessibility remains a key priority for the Festival in 2021 and in the future....

Reflecting on 2020: Community, Covid, and Courage

Our Communities Programme Director, Noëlle Cobden, reflects on her first 12 months leading our year-round work in Edinburgh, the Lothians and beyond. Read on for her highlights of a strange year, how we pivoted our communtiy work to...

Citizen Winter Warmer activities still available online

Catch up with all the fun from our Citizen Winter Warmer, follow the links to DrawAlongs, workshops, performances and tutorials from the weekend's activities....

Citizen Winter Warmer

On Saturday 12 December Edinburgh International Book Festival will be holding a day of online activities with authors, illustrators and talented local writers for our Citizen Winter Warmer....

Citizen Goes Online

Last week we launched The Citizen Collective, an online creative writing initiative for young people across four local high schools. We're also starting an online writing group for adults in North Edinburgh and Musselburgh...

Looking back: Spotlight on Citizen Events

In this blog, we highlight three Citizen events from the August 2020 Book Festival Online which examine what 'community' means in a time of crisis...

Precious objects inspire Citizen writers

Listen to the work of two of our Brunton Citizen writers, where they take precious objects as a starting point for a piece of reflective writing....

Where Dandelions Go: the film

Here we're sharing in full the story written by children and families from North Edinburgh, in collaboration with Craigroyston Primary School, North Edinburgh Arts, and our Communities Writer in Residence, Eleanor Thom....

“A citizen is…” – your responses in poetry

Discover a new poem, Citizen, created with ideas from our Stories & Scran participants, put together by Leyla Josephine...

Creative challenge: turning fridge magnets into poetry

We challenged our Citizen collaborators to create some poetry using 30 randomly-allocated fridge magnet words. Here we share Karen's response to the challenge and tell you how you can give it a go at home....

Stories & Scran: A Special Citizen Event

Enjoy Edinburgh International Book Festival from your own home

A spotlight on three Citizen events from our August 2020 programme, which aim to help us understand the meaning of community in the time of Covid-19....

Musselburgh’s Hidden Treasures – Making Stories from Stones

Discover a collection of stories in film, inspired by a game where families in Musselburgh hid and found 'Story Stones'. Created by Eleanor Thom....

Teaching Children to Fail

In this Guest Blog, Leyla Josephine reflects on her time as Schools Writer in Residence for Citizen....

Book Bags for Citizen

This week we have been packing and distributing book and activity packs to children and adults in Musselburgh and North Edinburgh....

The Keys to Our Lives – a Citizen Podcast

In this podcast, two Musselburgh-based groups join together through poetry and discussion. We invite you to be part of the conversation by submitting your poems, songs and pictures exploring what the theme means to you....