About Us.
Our Aims.
To support children in developing a love of stories
including and outside of the traditional written format,
through inspiration, collaboration, and education.
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What Do We Do?
* Bring you an exciting programme of events celebrating storytelling in all its forms.
* Look for ways to engage with children of all ages, seeking to connect with them on their wavelength and inspire the ways that they learn
* There are so many different ways to enjoy stories, through books, audiobooks, storytelling, treasure hunts and in ever increasing digital ways too - we want to explore all of them with you in our festival.
* Utilise the rich variety of venues across the city of Canterbury to provide different types of events
* Involve bookshops and businesses​
* Have fun!
Who we are
We are Bex and Rhys Hughes. We have both worked in Canterbury for over a decade and love the city! Bex is the founder of Bookshop Crawl UK (now a CIC and the parent company of the literature festival), a socially antisocial event provider, organising events across the country to celebrate and support bookshops, and Rhys has been her primary conspirator and Bookshop Crawl group leader since 2017. We firmly believe that children's books are for everyone and that all ways of engaging with stories count as reading!
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To celebrate our 10th year of bookshop crawling we decided to pursue our long held feeling that a festival dedicated to children's books was just what our area needs - leading us to create Canterbury Children's Literature Festival!
So here we are, ever expanding tbrs and newly rejuvenated dressing up boxes at the ready - here to bring a literary world of magic for the children in our area!
