Thanks to the generous support from the Arts Council and the Co-operative Community Fund, Headingley LitFest was able to host its first major event specifically targeting young people in our community with a wide-ranging programme of events.
We started with a well-attended especially commissioned performance of ‘The Woodhouse New Woman’ by Theatre of the Dales, first performed at the main LitFest in March. Focussing on Mary Gawthorpe, local suffragist, it both entertains and informs as it follows her journey from dutiful daughter into radical politics. It is expected to tour to local schools in the autumn.
A creative writing workshop
– to find your inner poet – was a delightful couple of hours in the company of James Nash, local published poet,
assisted by Ruth Middleton from the Headingley
Writers Group, run by the WEA at Heart. Although a small audience, the quality of work produced was
high – and the young people have given us ideas about how to recruit more of
them in the future. That’s what
pilots are for! As one participant
said, “I brought my daughter to this event, and ended up participating
myself! It was a fabulous
experience for my daughter, who has shown promise in her writing, and reads
avidly, but is reticent about making her voice heard publicly. The session was
skilfully and sensitively run.
Excellent.”
The film We Are Poets was
again shown to a healthy audience that was both moved and uplifted by the story of six
young Leeds poets, none with an easy backstory, who go off to an international
‘slam’ in Washington called Brave New Voices. And get to the semi-final. Beating forty other teams. But as Alex Ramseher-Bache,
director, in the informative Q&A session afterwards, said “Points aren’t
the aim; the point is the poetry.”
And it was – affecting, engaging, emotional. For more information, check out We Are Poets. Watch out for it on DVD soon.
Finally, Alex Rushfirth put
together a great evening of local young musicians playing their own songs and
poems to their original music. As Seas-of-Green
sang,
‘We're
mutually in harmony/ all programmed by a man with a pocket full of pens’
Le Servo de Spock backed this up with some very original numbers where
the music was definitely only illustrating the poetry. A shame we had to call
time at 10.30 pm!
