Get Hastings Reading Our passion for words goes viral

By Stephen Ratcliffe

Culture Shift, a key partner in the Get Hastings Reading campaign, has launched a series of short films to encourage young people to take up the art of creative writing. The films feature five local creative professionals.

A key aim of the Get Hastings Reading campaign is to share a passion for words and language.  With the help of journalists, scriptwriters and songwriters, the campaign was running a series of Word Café events in secondary schools across Hastings to showcase how words and language lie at the heart of their jobs.  This initiative was thwarted by Covid-19 restrictions.  Undaunted, the campaign decided to go viral. 

The five local professionals featured in the films are Ed Boxall, Chrissy Harmar-Brown, Andy Willard, Siddy Bennett and John Knowles, and their videos cover creative activities such as Graphic Design, Cartooning, Graphic Novels, Illustration and Script writing. Each video is highly interactive, and viewers are encouraged to share their work. 

Each artist has produced five short videos which have been shared with local secondary schools and are also freely available on Culture Shift’s YouTube channel. All 25 videos can be viewed at: 

www.youtube.com/channel/UCVBQ1bN-C-XMMciytzspJXw
(Search Culture Shift Sound Bites)

Speaking about the project, Ed Boxall said: “I have really enjoyed the chance to find ways for young people to be creative with words and images.  The films are a brilliant toolkit that young people can go back to again and again, providing an amazing resource that empowers and enables them to be creative and have fun with words in a fantastic range of art forms.   The films will definitely help people to enjoy words and develop their literacy – but the best thing is none of the projects offered feel like work at all!”

Chrissy Harmar-Brown said: “I had no idea how the film of me suggesting some scriptwriting exercises would work and I was surprised and delighted by the results. The students responded with imagination and flair, creating compelling characters and coming up with wonderful plot ideas which I hope they develop. It’s always a joy when young writers are able to generate their own ideas.”

Catherine Orbach, Director at Culture Shift said: “The videos were a great way to reach out to young people during the lockdown. As films they are resources which will be there for years to come and we hope many more young people will access them. We are really grateful to the professionals who made this possible and were prepared to have a go at making films themselves – often for the first time.”

The SoundBite videos are part of the Read Your Way initiative, which is being led by Education Futures Trust, working in partnership with the NSMC, FSN, Hastings Storytelling Festival, Culture Shift and 18 Hours.  Read Your Way is funded by the Hastings Opportunity Area and aims to improve standards of literacy amongst children and young people in the town.

• www.educationfuturestrust.org/get-hastings-reading
www.facebook.com/ReadYourWayHastings

World Book Day has partnered with the National Literacy Trust to bring Share a Story Live to the area. The free event will see six children’s authors and illustrators bring books to life for around 1,000 school children in the iconic De La Warr Pavilion on Wednesday 4th March.

The National Literacy Trust Hub in Hastings was launched in January 2019 to raise awareness of the importance of literacy while improving primary school reading levels and encouraging reading for pleasure.

• Visit literacytrust.org.uk/communities/hastings to find out more.

An event on 29th January saw young people from the local community mix with football players and staff at HUFC’s home ground, The Pilot Field, to celebrate the launch of a book corner to encourage young readers to take books when they attend matches. 

Get Hastings Reading is developing an action plan to increase literacy in young people, including fun reading days, the creation of book corners in local venues, the establishment of word cafes to support and inspire young people to improve their reading skills, and the recruitment of reading ambassadors to help support and mentor young people. 

“Books to the ceiling, books to the sky. My pile of books is a mile high. How I love them! How I need them! I’ll have a long beard by the time
I read them.” – ARNOLD LOBEL

Hastings-based support charity Education Futures Trust (EFT) is delighted to announce that it has been appointed to lead the Get Hastings Reading campaign in 2020 following an award from the Hastings Opportunity Area (HOA).

EFT will continue the campaign begun last year by the National Literacy Trust who ran the campaign during 2018-2019 and looks forward to working with a consortium of partners over the coming year including Culture Shift, FSN, 18 Hours, Hastings Storytelling Festival and the National Social Marketing Centre.

Carole Dixon, EFT’s CEO, commented: “This is an exciting opportunity to make a real difference in the town. The plan of the campaign is to embed reading spaces in our local community venues and make books accessible to all.”

The aim of Get Hastings Reading is to improve literacy standards within the town and inspire children to read for pleasure, with exciting initiatives planned for the year ahead.  EFT and partners will promote a number of ways in which children and young people can freely access books, take part in reading events, and hear from authors and storytellers in an exciting yearlong campaign to fill Hastings with books!

Look out for the Get Hastings Reading book cases, specially designed by local young people for this project, as they pop up at a variety of venues across town.  Children will be encouraged to help themselves to a book to keep or read and pass on, as they develop a life-long love of reading. The first bookshelf was opened at Our Café @Ore, attached to the Ore Community Centre, on 5th October during the Fun Palace event.  

Children can also look out for the huge ‘Talking Heads’ which will be coming to Hollington in December and take part in a young persons’ Word Café. EFT is working towards a target to give 10,000 books away during the Get Hastings Reading campaign and is actively seeking reading ambassadors to help spread the word. In addition, EFT would like to hear from anyone that has good quality books they would like to donate, and also any local businesses that could volunteer as drop-off points for the books, which will be collected and distributed to the young people in Hastings and St Leonards.

• For more information, please contact George Kane on 01424 722241 or email: office@educationfuturestrust.org 

Get Hastings Reading partners, Education Futures Trust: www.educationfuturestrust.org/get-hastings-reading

This year Hastings Storytelling Festival is happening in October (5th – 13th), rather than November, with another packed programme of storytelling for children, families and adults, and incorporating a broad range of local community partners.

Highlights include the free Children’s Storytelling Carnival Day, with live storytelling and performances including puppet shows, drumming workshops and the ever-popular Children’s Parade. There’s even a life-size show globe with a real mermaid inside.

Impossible Theatre return with a large, interactive, illuminated installation of three speaking and singing giant heads. These magically animated projections use the faces of audience volunteers to sing, tell stories and be the performers in this show. In partnership with Get Hastings Reading, Hastings Storytelling Festival are excited to extend the Festival venues to Hollington for the first time.

There’ll also be an audio installation based in Wellington Square – created by a collaboration between Anna Page, Hastings Thrives, Whalebone Films and young people from Hastings Academy and Robsack Primary Academy, based on a theme of Women in Science. The celebrated Sujata Banerjee Dance Company have been working with dancers from Sacred Heart School and HOPE-G for a performance with special guest Santosh Nair. Maria Ferguson brings her sassy, heartwarming, ‘Essex Girl’ Kirsty’s story about house parties, West Ham matches, choir practice – telling you what its really like to be an Essex Girl. Hosted by Timberlina, Mother’s Ruin return with an unpredictable night of cabaret, stories and performance with a focus on ‘Queer Futures’.

• Further details and full programme can be found at:
www.hastingsstoryfest.org.uk/facebook.com/hastingsstoryfest/ 
@hastingsstory

Families in Hastings are encouraged to get outside and practise their communication and literacy skills this summer with a new Lost Words Trail around the town.

As part of the Get Hastings Reading campaign, the trail will take families to eight locations along the seafront to find a nature-themed word at each venue. Families will be encouraged to take part in simple activities along the way to get them talking about the great outdoors and the lost words they have found.

The Lost Words Trail is inspired by The Lost Words: A Spell Book, written by Robert Macfarlane and illustrated by Jackie Morris, and features beautiful words and artwork from the book. It aims to reconnect children with nature and the great outdoors by exploring words that are falling out of common usage. Research suggests that children have a much deeper and broader understanding of the world around them if they experience the outdoors. Spending time outside as a family gives children the chance to talk about their surroundings, learn new words and improve their communication skills.

Get Hastings Reading was launched by the National Literacy Trust and Hastings Opportunity Area in January this year to improve the literacy outcomes of children and young people in Hastings and promote a love of reading throughout the town.

As families complete the trail, they will also find letters which they can unscramble to reveal a hidden word. They can then use their hidden word to enter a prize draw to win a beautiful copy of The Lost Words: A Spell Book or family tickets to a show at the White Rock Theatre. Families can enter the draw by emailing gethastingsreading@literacytrust.org.uk or by dropping their Lost Word Trail map off at Hastings Library.

The trail launches on Friday 24th May and will run through to the end of the summer holidays, and the competition closes at the end of August.

• Further information at gethastingsreading.org.uk