Olympics creative director Stephen Daldry has been named as a patron of next year’s Pop Up Festival of Stories, which aims to encourage children to read books and write their own.
The Oscar-nominated film and theatre director is among several celebrities backing the project, which will see more than 3,000 youngsters in the capital take part in a schools programme and more than 10,000 attending a weekend of activities with authors, illustrators and poets.
Now in its third year, the Pop Up Festival focuses on inner-city youngsters around King’s Cross and Hackney and has won international awards for improving literacy.
As part of the schools programme, thousands of youngsters will be given a book to read and the chance to meet its author at more than 100 workshops in cultural venues including the British Library, the Comics Museum and the Wellcome Collection.
In July, the festival climaxes with a free weekend event at the Granary Square development in King’s Cross, featuring interactive experiences with some of the nation’s best-loved children’s books, creative writing workshops, a pop-up cinema and a restaurant providing world cuisine run by this year’s Masterchef champion Shelina Permalloo.
Organisers have said that next year’s festival would be the biggest and most ambitious so far, with workshops and activities also focusing on “family literacy”, involving parents as well as children.
A recent report by the National Literacy Trust found that more than half of children said they preferred TV to reading, 22 per cent never read a book in their leisure time and 17 per cent would be embarrassed if their friends “caught them” reading.
