The Book Festival’s first Citizen Schools Writer in Residence, the poet and novelist Claire Askew, summarises her inspiring experience working with three Edinburgh high schools to explore ideas of belonging and identity. The Citizen Schools programme was wide-reaching in its first year: I was invited to engage with three very different groups of young people from three different schools in …
Fresh Tales from the Town for Tomorrow
A residency project which formed the backbone of ReimagiNation: Cumbernauld challenged pupils at four local primary schools to invent new tales of the town which can stand alongside the ‘official’ and too often negative story embedded in the public imagination. After sessions with theatre maker Ishbel McFarlane and weekly meetings with childrens’ author Mike Nicholson, the results are more imaginative, …
Moving Pictures, Hidden Clocks
Daniel Gray continues his exploration of life in Cumbernauld past, present and future. Here, he finds out what signs and symbols hold meaning for local residents, and gets an insight into what they feel is lacked and what is loved in the town. Beyond the plastic cones is the clock. It came from St Enoch Station, following the many Glasgow …
Stories Under the Surface
Mike Nicholson has been working with pupils in Kildrum, Carbrain, St Mary’s and St Margaret of Scotland Primary Schools in Cumbernauld. Here he shares his initial reactions to the sessions with the kids and teases what stories might emerge from the sessions. Four schools visited, eight sessions completed and the first stages of the ReimagiNation: Cumbernauld schools’ writing project are …
Green Coloured Pencils
Writer and historian Daniel Gray is working with CACE Older People Active Lives service users as part of our ReimagiNation creative residency. Below he shares some thoughts on the town from his first visit to the town. Those who first drew what would become Cumbernauld did so with plenty of green pencils. For each house, a garden; for each towerblock, …
Cumbernauld: Meet Ishbel McFarlane
Ahead of a series of special workshops with the young and old of Cumbernauld, we asked our three resident artists to introduce themselves and share their thoughts on how they’d approach the questions they’ll bring to local people. Theatre maker Ishbel McFarlane’s new performance/game Plan invites audiences to construct a town in much the same way as New Town planners …
Cumbernauld: Meet Daniel Gray
Ahead of a series of special workshops with the young and old of Cumbernauld, we asked our three resident artists to introduce themselves and share their thoughts on how they’d approach the questions they’ll bring to local people. Writer and historian Daniel Gray is working with service users at Cumbernauld Action Care for the Elderly to gather stories of the …
Cumbernauld: Meet Mike Nicholson
I’m Mike Nicholson, an Edinburgh-based children’s author who enjoys writing for others to read, as well as working with others to create their own stories. It took me a while to get into writing. I had worked in a few jobs with different charities before I twigged that what I really love is playing around with words and forming stories; …
A year in Booked!
Booked! has been bigger and better than ever this year. We’ve travelled far and wide, engaged thousands of people and worked with hundreds of partners, authors, artists and more. We want to give you a sense of what Booked! has achieved and what we intend to do as this still young portion of our work develops further in 2017. Booked! …
LandWords
How do we connect to Scotland’s stories, old and new, in our post-industrial, post-referendum, postmodern age? Are we telling our own tales of the places we love? LandWords was a special collaboration between Edinburgh International Book Festival and Falkirk Community Trust, in which Falkirk’s Callendar House provided space and inspiration to explore questions of place, identity, history and story. Situated …
The Crocodiamond
The Crocodiamond brought together pupils at Sandaig Primary School in Glasgow with author and illustrator Debi Gliori, a storyteller and four musicians from the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. The children worked with these artists to create images which would visually tell the story of The Crocodiamond, a tale written by acclaimed children’s author Anthony Horowitz, set to music by innovative composer …
Graphic Lyrics
Beginning last August with a visit to the Book Festival for a Stanley Odd performance, S4 pupils from Shawlands Academy in Glasgow joined us for Graphic Lyrics, a multicultural and cross-disciplinary creative journey. Working with members of Stanley Odd, the pupils wrote and recorded raps reinterpreting a traditional story from their own culture (Romanian, Slovakian and Iraqi); then with the …