Cressida’s Creativity Summer Camp
Waterstones Children’s Laureate UK and best-selling author illustrator of the How to Train Your Dragon and Wizards of Once series, Cressida Cowell will host a week of activity celebrating children’s innate creativity and showcasing the enormous wealth of talent across the UK, starting today (Monday 6 July) and running until Friday 10 July.
After a term of unparalleled disruption to children’s education, Cressida’s Creativity Summer Camp will inspire families to embrace books, reading and creativity at home over the summer holidays for entertainment, learning, as well as to support mental well-being.
Literature Wales is thrilled that our own Children’s Laureate Wales, Eloise Williams will be part of a special international Children’s Laureates readathon event on Thursday 9 July alongside Cressida herself, Jason Reynolds (US), Áine Ní Ghlinn (Ireland), Ursula Dubosarsky (Australia) and Manon Sikkel (The Netherlands), to celebrate the power of sharing a story.
Other writers taking part throughout the week, which marks Cressida Cowell’s one-year anniversary as the UK’s Waterstones Children’s Laureate, include Young People’s Laureate for London Theresa Lola, Chris Riddell, Joseph Coelho, Onjali Raúf, Sharna Jackson and Eoin Colfer.
The week also marks the official launch of Cressida’s Laureate Gallery on www.childrenslaureate.org.uk where children will be able to exhibit their own work throughout Cressida’s time as Waterstones Children’s Laureate, in a showcase of creativity and imagination.
Cressida Cowell, Waterstones Children’s Laureate, said: “Every child deserves the right to be creative. Every child has the potential to be magically creative if they are inspired and encouraged. Ensuring that children are given this opportunity has been a passion of mine for many years; it is at the heart of my time as Waterstones Children’s Laureate and my Reading Charter, and it has never been more important than now, given the huge disruption that children have faced over the pandemic.
Creative thinking and creative confidence nurture essential benefits for everything we do: vital to all careers, to societal development and the building of empathy, and, of utmost importance now, in providing solace and supporting our own mental wellbeing and personal growth.
I hope that my Summer Camp can bring the benefits of creativity to children all over the UK, as well as showcase a vital part of the UK’s creative sector – which was growing at five times the rate of the wider economy pre lockdown – at a time when our cultural future faces great uncertainty.”
To watch Summer Camp, and for the full line-up and daily schedule of events, visit: www.childrenslaureate.org.uk