Plymouth Libraries will be taking part in a new programme of activities to celebrate the novel and promote the joy of reading as part of the BBC’s The Novels That Shaped Our World festival.
Led by Libraries Connected and funded by a £253,000 grant from Arts Council England’s National Lottery Project Grants programme, with additional support from BBC Arts, the year-long multi-platform engagement collaboration marks 300 years since the birth of the English language novel.
Plymouth has been award a grant of £1,000 to run a one day workshop aimed at 15 to 24 year olds, at the newly refurbished St Budeaux library, with the Plymouth Zine Library to produce a zine based around the novels list. Zines are short magazines or fanzines and are a great way to encourage participation in an audience that may not be typical readers or library users.
Participants will be encouraged to respond creatively to novels, themes and characters through writing, illustration and art. Each participant will create a page that will be used to produce a collaborative zine to celebrate reading. At the end of the workshop, all the work will be pulled together to create one single zine which will then be reproduced and a copy placed in all Plymouth libraries, online and in the Plymouth Zine Library.
Local illustrator and zinester Kitty McEwan, curator of the Plymouth Zine Library will be running the workshop. Kitty said: "I’ve always loved reading and coming up with my own comics and stories, and so I started self-publishing my work in zines when I was in my early teens.
"I think libraries are really important, especially as a safe and inspiring space for young people, so I started volunteering for the Summer Reading challenge when I was 14. I established PZL as an independent archive of zines and began giving public workshops to encourage people to create and publish their own work. I’m really excited to be working with Plymouth Libraries on a workshop for the BBC Novels that Shaped our World programme. The list is full of great novels, but my personal favourite are the Hunger Games trilogy!"
Councillor Pete Smith, Deputy Leader of the Council said: “This is a fantastic event to be involved in and really unusual way to encourage our young people to get more involved with reading. I’m really pleased that Kitty has agreed to run this workshop for us and hope as many young people as possible come along to get involved.”
The session runs from 10am to 4pm at St Budeaux Library on Wednesday 19 February. You can see the full BBC list of novels that shaped our world here.