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 …
Citizen: Making Zines with Claire Askew
“When I needed to get to know them, I asked the three Citizen schools groups to make zines. I wanted to find out which issues and activities most interested the students; I wanted to give them a creative activity to do and ideally, one which related to books, reading, publishing”
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, …