Karen's blog: Ilkley Literature Festival online content

Detailing competitions, jobs, seminars and more:

Lift Your Spirits:
New Online Content to Enjoy At Home

While the end of this lockdown is now in sight (hurrah!), there's still a way to go before we can return to live events and gathering together to take part in creative activities.

We have new online content for you to enjoy at home with a new season of our Settee Seminars podcast and an opportunity to 'spark' your own creativity by becoming a link in our Chain Reactions project. This month we're also launching our 2021 poetry competitions for children and young people and we're looking for someone to help us navigate the future by joining ILF's Board of Trustees.

Lastly, if you have engaged with any of our work online over the past year, we'd love to hear what you think of the content we've produced. If you can spare 5 mins to take a survey about our digital activities, we'd be very grateful.

Thank you and keep taking care for now!
The ILF Team

Launch of Settee Seminars
Season Two

Season Two of our podcast series, Settee Seminars, is available on all podcast platforms now! We have released four new episodes of fascinating short talks by leading experts from the University of Leeds, introducing you to a wide range of topics, including...

Emily Webb: Tea in 18th Century Britain
Fozia Bora & Alaric Hall: Decolonising Medieval Literature and History
Jason Allen-Paisant: On Being a Black Body in Nature
Greg Radick: Darwin's Argument by Analogy

All Season One episodes are still available, covering subjects from Fidel Castro's 1960 visit to New York to the truth about 5G technology.

Settee Seminars are available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you enjoy what you hear, please rate and review the podcast. We'd love to know what you think!

Want to learn more about the topics discussed on Settee Seminars? Reading lists are available on our website or in the episode description of your podcast app.

Spotify

Apple Podcasts

Listen to Settee Seminars

Chain Reactions
Six fantastic artistic commissions
to 'spark' your own creativity

Chain Reactions is a collaborative, cross-artform project aimed to inspire people to respond to each other's creative work. In January, we commissioned six artists to produce a piece of work in response to the idea of 'Spark'. The pieces included spoken word, textile art, sound collage, dance, music and film.

Click here to view the six incredible commissons

We are now launching stage two and challenging YOU to respond to one of the commissioned pieces. Your response can take any artform and can be in any digital medium.

Want to get involved and be part of this creative community? Share your idea/piece with us at fringe@ilkleylitfest.org.uk. The selected responses will be featured on our website and social media channels.

Get Involved with Stage Two

2021 Children's and Young People's
Poetry Competitions Now Open!

Our annual Children and Young People's Poetry Competitions are now open for entries! Schools and individual children from Yorkshire and Lancashire are welcome to enter.

This year to celebrate our upcoming Spring weekend, we're looking for poems that respond to the theme of... nature and the natural world

Not sure where to start? Watch the video above to hear judge Andy Craven-Griffiths' five tips to stand out!

Children's Poetry Competition Age Groups

Reception, Year 1, Year 2
Years 3 and 4
Years 5 and 6

Click here for more info and how to enter the Children's Competition

Young People's Poetry Competition Age Groups

Years 7, 8 and 9
Years 10 and 11
Years 12 and 13

Click here more info and how to enter the Young People's Competition

The closing date for entries for both competitions is Friday 28 May 2021.

Take Our Survey &
Help Shape Our Digital Work

If you have engaged with any of our work online over the last year - book quizzes, writing challenges, podcasts or website content - we'd really like to hear from you! Help us learn more about you and what you think of our digital work so we can deliver work that is relevant to you.

The survey should take no longer than 5 minutes.

Thank you for letting us know what you think about our current online content so we can work to make it better.

Take the Survey Here

Join ILF's Board of Trustees

Do you have a background in finance and an interest in using your skills to help support an arts charity? Apply now to join our Board!

We are looking for a Trustee with Special Responsibility for Finance. If you share our passion for books, reading and writing and providing opportunities for people to engage with their own creativity and enjoy the creativity of other people, we’d like to hear from you.

Deadline: Friday 26 February 2021.