Swindon Ten
Youth Literature Festival

In November we had several exciting literary events involving all the    secondary schools in Swindon - known as the Swindon Ten Youth Literature Festival.  The £10,000 yearly Festival is aimed at getting young people involved in literature.  We are thrilled to report that these events were  extremely successful and far exceeded our expectations. Our students not only benefitted enormously from them but individual contributions were outstanding.

The week kicked off on Monday 9th November with an inter-school book quiz hosted by  Dorcan school library. One of our librarians accompanied six pupils from Yrs 7, 8 and 9 to compete in 12 rounds of questions based on different genres and authors.  We would like to thank Jessica Davies, Matthew Ferguson, Drew Grimes, Megan Harvey, Frank Lyons and Alanna Moffatt for representing Commonweal and doing a great job.

Throughout the day on Tuesday, in allocated time slots, seven schools  came together to rise to the challenge of writing a collaborative original story with each school allowed 45 minutes to contribute150 words in an event called The Fastest Story In The West.  Nova Hreod created the opening and then the story was passed, in turn, to Swindon Academy, Kingsdown and Warneford for their instalments.  Commonweal’s six Yr 9 students waited with anticipation in the library to get their teeth into writing their part of the horror story. Our students’ task was very challenging as they had to read through the previous schools’ additions and come up with something that tied-in.  The whole story was then emailed to Greendown who had the  unenviable task of drawing it to a conclusion.  Our thanks go to Zac Brown, Jeremy Foster, Sian Francis-Cox, Ashley Hillis, Bethan Hire and Tallulah Lyons who did a fantastic job which was made extremely difficult by the time constraint.

On Wednesday, the buzz coming from the hall was electric when Chris   Bradford, a sword-wielding author came to talk to all of the Year 7s and   Year 8s. Chris is well qualified to write stories about Japanese martial arts because he is a black belt in Taijutsu and has trained in Judo, Karate, Kick-boxing and Samurai swordsmanship. Chris gave an exciting demonstration using his Samurai sword whilst describing scenes from his books and the  pupils were enthralled.  Mild-mannered Chris stayed behind to patiently sign books and school planners.

Surely that was enough excitement for one week you’d think - but no!  There was more to come in the shape of Fred Blunt - a very successful local illustrator who has made a career from his talent.  Fred has illustrated books, logos for dot com companies and even packaging for food products. Commonweal library welcomed 13 of our own talented Yr 10 artists as well as 13 GCSE art students from St Joseph’s school for a workshop  with Fred.  The morning started with a general presentation on forms of  illustration, followed by a presentation of Fred’s own work.  The students were then given a choice of three different briefs to work from, and asked to create animated, cartoon-style illustrations from them.  Fred was always on hand to suggest ways in which they might further improve their work.  The resulting ink drawings were all of a very high standard and were taken to Churchfields school to be exhibited alongside work produced by a number of other Swindon schools.  

This exciting week concluded on Friday with the fabulous children’s horror author, Darren Shan, appearing at the Wyvern Theatre. Each school took a full coach load of their students to hear him talk about his books and how he gets his ideas etc.  He quickly got the audience involved when he asked for volunteers to join him on stage to act out a scene from the book that  has recently been made into a Hollywood film and is a box office hit at the cinema - Cirque Du Freak.  Many hands went up and Darren chose four students from different schools to perform a variety of tasks. Ethan Rose was chosen from Commonweal to be a narrator; a girl was chosen for  an ear-piercing scream; a young man was to mimic a howling wolf; and  another boy played a character from the book.  With just a couple of minutes of preparation, the 4 youngsters and Darren produced a very slick and confident 10 minute production that had the whole auditorium engrossed  and in fits of laughter.  Darren finished with questions from the audience and after everyone had gone, spent four hours signing books that had been left for him, taking the trouble to make individual comments in each one.

All in all, it was a fun-packed educational week that everyone will remember for a long time to come. Annette Whatley, Librarian

Chris really hit it hard with his young Samurai assembly. He taught us that if you believe in what you read it can really come true. As he was telling us about his book, he told us about Jack Fletcher who was the main character and how he was the hero of the Young Samurai series. He was also teaching us about facts of being a Samurai and how it’s not just all about back flips and stunts; it’s about passion for the sport and how much you get involved.

He also brought in to school a meter long (real) Samurai sword (which my friend Ethan said was plastic but I knew it wasn’t). If he was not a black belt in martial arts then I bet he could have been arrested for being in a public place wielding it. Overall it was a very good assembly and I wish he could come again.By George Todd age 12