our work

free the word festival / international pen

Eastside produced and delivered the education and outreach programme as part of Free the Word 2008 - International PEN's major new literature festival in London, celebrating writers and readers from around the world. Free The Word gives voice to some of the world's most inspiring writers and reaches out to London's diverse audiences. Eastside focussed on European writers and successfully engaged more than 100 young people across three strands: Moving Words: Young people, poets and spoken word artists working together to create 4 literary walks around the Southbank as part of the main festival programme. Migrating Words: inter-generational storytelling involving parents and their young children. Slam the Word: poetry workshops culminating in a poetry slam and a showcase event at the Young Vic Theatre. Throughout the festival weekend, Moving Words involved a group of young performers leading visitors around the Southbank on a series of poetry trails which explored the theme of 'the writer next door' and incorporated site-specific poetry in some unexpected places. The site for each performance gave the audience an opportunity to take part in a dialogue about freedom of expression as well as re-assessing their views on emergent writers. A highlight for the performers was when young French writer, Faiza Guene attended the walk in which her work featured prominently - speaking as it does so clearly to young people from displaced cultures - this underlined the message that young writers in London are not only part of a community within their own local neighbourhoods but part of a much larger international community.Participants of Slam the Word were also given their own performance platform at Festival in a Thimble which showcased the festival highlights and gave participants the opportunity to share the stage and the spotlight with writers as celebrated as Sir Tom Stoppard. Eastside also teamed up with the writers collective '26' to offer short mentorships to some of the the participants; these mentorships led to the creation of a longer mentorship with the brand director of Orange. From 2010, the outreach and education programme is set to get even bigger; Eastside is planning to establish a regular writing group in the run up to the next festival, we will also be creating an international writing exchange uniting young people's voices from around the world, we will be devising more site specific poetry and our inter-generational storytelling will find a performance platform at the festival too. To find out more or to get involved, please contact us.