Talented media students at Richmond School and Sixth Form College have used their design and marketing skills to promote Richmond’s forthcoming Walking and Book Festival. The school was approached to create a suite of posters for the Festival to display throughout the community to publicise the many events in their programme.
After much consideration, six designs have been selected for the Festival posters, with a further two designs being chosen to promote ‘Little Alf’, a talk by leading children’s author, Hannah Russell, at Richmond Library.
In addition to providing visual input to the Festival, a group of Year 10 and Year 12 English students are creating blogs about some of the literary events, to appeal to a younger audience and encourage them to attend. These will be shared via the Festival’s and School’s social media channels. The students are reviewing a number of talks including Baroness Hale’s ‘Spider Woman’ (an alumna of Richmond School), Horrible Histories (in which actor and alumnus Simon Farnaby stars in the popular TV series) and Biracial Britain, a talk which is of particular interest to sixth form students who are working on a school equality and diversity project.
Sam Weston, Media Studies teacher said: “The students rose to the challenge and were very excited to have the opportunity to be working on a live brief with a set deadline, so this gave them a genuine appreciation and experience of the time pressures in the world of work for designers and marketeers.”
Barbara Gravenor, Chair of the Festival, said: “We are thrilled to involve the students in the Festival and are really impressed with the posters they have created for us. We are looking forward to reading the event reviews too. It is wonderful that these young people are contributing so much to our Festival and we can’t wait to share their stunning promotional artwork with the community. Thank you to all the students for their tremendous support.”
The Festival programme is packed with a wide choice of daytime and evening events to inspire the readers and ramblers of Richmondshire, including 30 walks around the stunning surrounding countryside, with 19 speakers and authors lined up. The team of dedicated volunteers have pulled out all the stops, working incredibly hard to ensure the Festival could go ahead this year, in spite of the challenges of Covid. The Festival is now run as a charity and is inviting people to join its Friends Scheme – find out more on becoming a Friend of the Festival at https://www.booksandboots.org/Support-Us/Friends
Tickets for the Festival are now on sale with full details of the programme and online booking at www.booksandboots.org . Tickets can also be purchased from the Festival Box Office at Richmond Information Centre in the Market Hall in Richmond and via the Georgian Theatre for events taking place there. Children’s events hosted at the library can be booked through Richmond Library.
Jenna Potter, Headteacher, concluded: “We are delighted to support the Walking and Book Festival which is such a popular and eagerly-awaited event each year. This is a wonderful opportunity for our students to support their community and has given them superb writing and creative experiences.”