Word Up Festival

On Sunday I took my daughters on a busman’s holiday to the first Word Up! Children’s Books Festival held at Allwyn School in Dulwich, London. Word Up! is three days of events for families with some of the best children’s book authors and illustrators including John Hegley, Phil Ardargh, Meg Rosoff, and Jaqueline Wilson, organised by the team behind the Ways With Words festivals and events, Kay Dunbar and Stephen Bristow.

We made our way to the dining hall which was full of stands with information for families, people playing the guitar and singing songs to entertain the crowd plus delicious cakes and coffee to fuel hungry parents.

Okido magazine was running a book making workshop with one of their illustrators. The books were made out of an A4 piece of paper with sections to create characters, colour in and plan the story which could be ingeniously folded into a tiny book  - very clever and the kids loved creating their own stories.

Whilst parents chatted over coffee and cake, the kids spent ages trying to get Wally from the Where’s Wally books to talk, as the guy in constume wasn't allowed to talk whilst in character, so the challenge was on!

The last session we went to was Charlie Dark’s poetry event – apparently Charlie used to go to Allywn School when ‘Dulwich was a hole’. He got all the children and parents joining in with his energetic and entertaining poems - really entertaining stuff.

All in all a well organised and inspiring day.

Read an interview with Charlie from the archive