The Byron Writers Festival has been taking Writers on the Road since 2014 and in 2016 they were able to add the StoryBoard Bus to include free creative writing workshops for schools. The annual Writers on the Road and StoryBoard Bus program takes some of Australia’s leading authors and storytellers throughout the region and provides free literary events for the communities and schools it visits.
On Friday the Byron Writers Festival received an $80,000 grant from the NSW government’s Regional Cultural Fund that will ensure that the program will be able to run three tours during the up-coming 12 months taking visiting authors to regional towns and schools across the northern rivers.
‘Writers on the Road is arts equity in action, bringing a taste of Byron Writers Festival plus the hands-on schools program of StoryBoard to far flung communities that otherwise would miss out,’ said StoryBoard founder and Byron Writers Festival Board member Dr Jesse Blackadder.
The program has travelled from Kempsey in the south to Tweed Heads in the North, and west to Glen Innes and Tenterfield, with an array of leading Australian authors.
This year Writers on the Road will be visiting Kyogle on Friday, 27 July; Alstonville on Saturday, 28 July; Tenterfield on Sunday, 29 July; Bonalbo on Monday, 30 July and Brunswick Heads on 31 July. The writers will visit local schools to conduct free creative writing workshops with students from all stages. In the evenings they will meet local writers and readers to discuss their mutual love of storytelling.
‘We’re delighted to be returning by popular request to Tenterfield, where the writers will take to the stage at the Sir Henry Parkes Memorial School of the Arts Theatre to debate the great Australian Myths, from Captain Thunderbolt to Peter Allen,’ said tour manager Zacharey Jane.
‘This funding boost means we can continue bringing this world class event to regional audiences not just once in a 12-month period, but three times, reaching so many more people.’
Participating writers in the first tour will be announced soon. For more information visit www.byronwritersfestival.com.
• See more news and articles on the 2018 Byron Writers Festival.
If this bus takes “visiting authors to regional towns and schools across the northern rivers.”, then where are the local authors and what are they doing?”