We had created a passion for words as a result of the WordUP work we did, so we decided to celebrate them and the project with our own festival in Frome. We teamed up with Bath Festivals and Molly Kennedy, an MA Events Management student from Bath Spa University, to put together a plan. Kennedy approached authors, poets, and wordsmiths as well as businesses and various venues throughout the town. She explained to them what we had achieved with WordUP and spoke passionately about how important it is to love words and demonstrated the research about the link poverty, loneliness, employment opportunities and mental health had with literacy. Due to this, all the businesses and people welcomed us with open arms and gave us their helping hand.
To put together the WordUP Festival of Words, we worked collectively with the community of Frome. Our free festival includes storytelling, poetry, graffiti workshops, slam poetry, community story writing and other exciting events that engage everyone with words. We wanted to have a series of free events and workshops that would not only be fun to take part in but would inspire the town of Frome to carry on the importance of literacy and writing from here on out.
