Literary Festival

Our inaugural Literary Festival took place last week, where we hosted Year 5 pupils from four local schools (Littlegarth, St Margaret’s, East Bergholt Primary and Holbrook Primary). They spent a fun-filled and inspiring day of workshops, led by Julian Sedgwick, a well-known children's author with a keen interest in China and Japan. This has influenced many of his books, and he spoke to the pupils about life in Japan and the inspiration behind his book, ‘Tsunami Girl’. 

Aims

Four workshops ran throughout the day, with a focus on Japanese culture.  

In our Library, Julian ran a haiku writing workshop, assisted by our English Department and Year 12 English pupils. 

In our wonderful Art department, pupils got creative and a little bit messy learning about Japanese art, using their fingers to paint and mimic tsunami waves. 

In our Music school, pupils really enjoyed creating their own Japanese pentatonic music on keyboards.  
Exciting demonstrations were also held in Biology, where pupils discovered how tectonic plates behave and what causes a Tsunami.  

A bookmark competition was held before the event, with the winning entry created by Khaleesi from Holbrook Primary. A printed copy of the winning bookmark was given out to all those who attended as a souvenir of the day. 

Impact

The Head of English at RHS, masterminded the day with our Librarian with our head of English commenting “On the back of World Book Day last week, it was a wonderful opportunity to share our resources with members of our local community. Pupils really enjoyed experiencing senior school life and exploring our inspiring library, art, music and science departments. We aim to make this an annual event.”  

Our Librarian commented “What a fabulous day we all had with Julian and it was enlightening to hear about his journey to becoming a writer. He talked about resilience, especially when things go wrong or in the face of disasters such as the tsunami in Japan, and he inspired the children to write some beautiful haikus.”

Pupil Involvement

Year 5 (all schools involved) and Year 12 from RHS who supported a workshop.