Our schools’ programme is shaping up into exciting activities for 2025

Please get in touch if you would like to help sponsor the work we love doing to encourage reading, imagination and engagement with the natural world

In 2024 we received two generous donations for our schools’ programme – a grant from a charitable foundation who have generously undertaken to continue supporting us for another year, and a contribution from a corporate fund for 2024 only. Together, they enabled us to provide for North Norfolk schools:

• 3 author talks,
• 2 creative workshops
• over 250 free books for North Norfolk school children
• the North Norfolk schools’ poetry competition
• subsidised transport from the University of East Anglia so that graduate students could get to Wells-next-the-sea and be inspired by amazing poetry readings and discussions and by our beautiful coast and landscape

In association with the Norfolk Rivers Trust we promoted engagement with the natural world through:

• 4 hands-on nature workshops for children aged 8 to 18

Thanks to The Fishmongers’ Company’s Fisheries’ Charitable Trust and Anglian Water’s Get River Positive Fund, as well as our partnership with the Norfolk Rivers Trust, our schools’ programme was free to all the schools taking part.

Find out what pupils and teachers said about their experiences by clicking to this page

Author talks and free books

Children from years 4, 5 and 6 at Wells-next-the-sea Primary and Nursery School and Langham Village School enjoyed author talks by Jess French (below) about the first book in her fantasy series – Beastlands: Race to Frostfall Mountain. Each child took home a signed copy of Jess’s book:

Alderman Peel High School Year 8’s visited Wells Maltings to hear about Richard Lambert‘s middle-grade fantasy novel Shadowtown (below). Richard led the children in writing exercises, and showed them how he puts his novels together before handing each a signed copy. Afterwards in their classrooms the school’s English teachers led discussions and encouraged the children to read on through the book; some groups studied and experimented with reproducing the effects of Richard’s writing while others explored his scenes and characters through drama.

Creative workshops

Gresham’s School Year 12 (sixth-form) English Literature A Level students came to Wells Maltings for a poetry-writing workshop run by Richard Lambert. Richard walked with five pupils and their teacher out onto the salt marsh and back to Wells Maltings where they turned their observations into inventive word forms.

Jess French also led all three years of Wells-next-the-sea Primary School children in a creative workshop at Wells Maltings, designing their own beasts. The results demonstrated extraordinary flights of imagination such as creatures with eyes on their hands. Jess’s adventurous career – penetrating the world’s wildest places and meeting the wildest of real-life animals – was also a source of fascination and inspiration for the children.

Nature workshops

Another group of Year-12 pupils from Gresham’s School and primary groups from Walsingham CE VA Primary School and Langham Village School took part in river-fly survey workshops on the banks of the River Stiffkey. The Norfolk Rivers Trust’s Tim Fisher taught the children how to catch, identify, count and release insects in the River Stiffkey – while explaining how changes in the invertebrate population will track the health of a river.

Chalk streams like the River Stiffkey are amazing but fragile ecosystems, globally unique to parts of the British Isles, northern France and northern Denmark. They have been increasingly degraded by human activities for hundreds of years.

Above: NRT’s Tim Fisher with three different groups of pupils. Each class spent two busy hours beside the River Stiffkey in October or early November, identifying and counting the mini beasts that live in the river bed and reveal what state it is in.

Student transport

15 students from the University of East Anglia enjoyed a subsidised return minibus journey to Wells-next-the-sea and tickets to both poetry events on the Sunday morning – enabling us to bring MA poetry-writers and other keen students to our beautiful town by the sea for a few hours of inspiration and engagement with readings and discussion between Alice Oswald and Matthew Hollis, Mark Cocker, Jane Lovell and Matt Howard.

Schools’ poetry competition

Our schools’ programme also features an annual schools’ poetry competition. Please click here for details on our dedicated web page.

Many thanks to our generous donors who enabled all the above:

If you are interested in taking part in the schools’ programme in future years or you would like to know more about becoming a sponsor or making a donation, please email:

info@literatureandlandscape.org

For more information about our riverfly surveying programme in Wells-next-the-sea’s local stream, the River Stiffkey, and to volunteer to join our group, please click here.