People in Central Library atrium

Voices from the City

A 10 Year Celebration Event with UNESCO City of Literature and the University of Nottingham

City of Literature
Location:
Nottingham Central Library
When: Saturday 29 November

Celebrate our City of Literature

Join us at Nottingham Central Library for a vibrant, community-centred celebration marking 10 years of Nottingham as a UNESCO City of Literature in partnership with the University of Nottingham.
This free, all-ages event brings the city’s rich literary heritage to life through poetry, storytelling, and interactive workshops from researchers at University of Nottingham.
Explore Nottinghamshire’s literary map, hear powerful multilingual stories from first-generation migrants, play with dialects and language, and uncover hidden feminist voices from the archives. With creative sessions led by local writers, poets, and scholars, followed by an exciting poetry showcase as the day’s finale, come and celebrate the voices that shape our city and add your own to Nottingham’s unfolding story.
The day culminates in a Poetry Showcase, where professional performers will respond to the city’s rich literary and cultural history – celebrating identity, resistance, and the enduring power of the written word. Whether you’re a seasoned poet or a first-time storyteller, come and celebrate Nottingham’s diverse voices and add your own to its unfolding story.

About the Organisations

Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature uses the power of words to transform lives, create new opportunities and establish Nottingham as a leading destination for lovers of literature worldwide. Focussing specifically on young and emerging creatives, they co-create opportunities and events to nurture and further creative and literary careers. Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature is a charity that works closely with educational institutions to enhance literacy skills and strengthen connections with the community.
The University of Nottingham is core-funder and collaborative partner of Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature. A public research University, it began life as a University College in 1881.

MAIN ATRIUM

A crowd of people stood in Nottingham Central Library's atrium

Language Bridges: Connecting Humans 

Join experience language educators from the University of Nottingham for an interactive workshop where stories, images, and voices become bridges between people and cultures. With your participation you will contribute to showing how languages reveal our shared humanity. Bringing together Nottingham’s diverse communities through the power of language, this interactive event invites visitors to share personal stories in their mother tongue. These multilingual stories will then be shared with a broader audience, sparking reflections and conversations with native-English speakers. Your story matters. Your language matters. Be part of the conversation.

Literary Map of Nottingham 

What do you know about Nottinghamshire’s literary heritage? Do you know the link between Agatha Christie and The Theatre Royal? The Literary Map of Nottingham celebrates both well-known and hidden stories from across the city and county. The map is a collaborative project between Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature, the University of Nottingham and Visit Nottingham and the printed map will be launched early next year. Join us to talk about mapping Nottinghamshire.

 Our words, our world – Celebrating languages and dialects 

Professor Nicola McLelland (Professor of German and History of Linguistics) presents a fun, hands-on exploration of language and dialects through a series of engaging games and activities for all ages. Explore Nottingham’s rich tapestry of dialects and languages in a playful, welcoming space featuring interactive games like “Crack the Code” and “LingoBingo” and discover how the way we speak shapes how we see the world and ourselves.

WORKSHOPS

A table full of crafts
Our exciting workshops taking a deeper dive into the collaborative projects at the University of Nottingham.

Feminist Zine Making – 10:30 – 12:15  

Drawing on rarely seen poems from the University of Nottingham’s Manuscripts and Special Collections, Kate Bustin (PhD candidate in Creative Writing) hosts a powerful poetry workshop inspired by writings from the second wave of feminism. Self-identifying women, whether newcomers to seasoned poets, are invited to read, reflect, and respond to these works through their own poetry in an exploration of how literature can inspire personal reflection and cultural change.

Mapping Nottingham’s stories – 14:00 – 16:00 

Join Dr Matthew Welton (Associate Professor in Creative Writing) and guests for an inspiring afternoon of story-sharing and creative writing. The Literary Map of Nottinghamshire celebrates both well-known and hidden stories from across the city and county. At the map’s workshop, Nottingham’s rich literary heritage will be explored through a Q&A with Dr Welton, Dr Gary Priestnall, and a representative from UNESCO Nottingham City of Literature. Then, take part in a hands-on session where you’ll have the chance to contribute your own story to the digital map.

Bi+ Lines: Writing Between the Lines – 15:00 – 17:00 

Helen Bowell, editor of Bi+ Lines (fourteen poems, 2023), the first anthology of bi+ poets, will lead an interactive poetry workshop to explore the notion of in-betweenness. We’ll read poems from the book and use them as jumping-off points to explore in-betweenness in poetic form, identities and the fabric of reality itself. We’ll find new ways to mine our daily lives to write and reconsider all the binaries we’ve been taught to depend on. This is a workshop that looks at queerness, but you don’t have to be bi+ or queer to take part.

POETRY SHOWCASE

People sitting in Central Library's atrium

A Poetic Response to Nottingham’s Literary Heritage

In this showcase event, Nottingham-based poetry publisher Bad Betty Press will bring local and national poets together to celebrate Nottingham’s rich tapestry of words, drawing inspiration from local voices like Byron, D.H. Lawrence, Nicola Monaghan, Rose Fyleman, Alan Sillitoe and John Lucas.
Each of the six headline poets (Alan Baker, Helen Bowell, Troy Cabida, Becky Cullen, Jack Wild Hall and Joshua Judson) will perform a set of poems including those specifically composed as a response to the literary history of Nottingham.
Book tickets here

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