Wordpool Family Day Back for Tenth Year

More than 14,000 invites have been sent to every schoolchild in Blackpool to help celebrate the tenth anniversary of the resort’s popular annual Festival of Words on Saturday, 2nd July.

Wordpool‘s Big Friendly Family Day will be held at Stanley Park and will be packed with lots of fun things to see, make and do for all ages.

Organised by Blackpool Council’s Arts and Library Services, the event starts at 13:00, with registration from 12:30 at the Visitor Centre and near the main gates.

Families will be given giant ‘What’s On Where’ maps to help them plot their trail of fun from the variety of exciting interactive activities on offer, including a show inside a giant pig, Aunty Social’s Boathouse Picture Show, The Winter Garden’s James and the Giant Peach, and a bubble breathing dragon.

They can also sign up for an Arts Award Discovery Activity Pack with certificates given to children for completing the award.

Family Learning are inviting children to join them on a Bear Hunt with furry hats and growly tales, and Poets Ashley Lister and Lisa Bower are performing Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes.

Throughout June, schoolchildren across the town have been investigating a band of Pirate Story Stealers with Save Our Stories, a new storytelling adventure for Blackpool and Wyre.

Storytellers Dan Worsley, Louise Fazackerley and artist Vanessa Card, have been helping children imagine the Big Unfriendly Storystealers; their stories and artwork will feature at the event.  The S.O.S RescueShip has been calling at schools throughout the month to collect the rescued stories.

New for 2016 is TIMEHOP, a Young Adult Fiction festival developed in partnership with the official Wordpool bookseller Storytellers Inc, which will be held on Thursday, 7th July at the Grand Theatre.

Arts and Libraries have been awarded a £70,000 Arts Lottery grant from Arts Council England to develop a new progamme of three annual festivals for Wordpool over the next two years.

Cllr Gillian Campbell, Deputy Leader of Blackpool said: “Wordpool is a fantastic free event which promises to be a fun day out for all the family.

“With BBC Lancashire broadcasting live from the park throughout the afternoon, storyteller extraordinaire Dan Worsley and performers from the stage show James and the Giant Peach at Winter Gardens but to name a few, this promises to be an unmissable high profile event for both residents and visitors.

“The funding from Arts Council England has enabled this exciting initiative to develop into an even more impressive festival in its tenth year of running and helped to seal the event into a truly landmark occasion for the local area and beyond.”

The new funding has created three new themed mini-festivals during the year in addition to the existing July festival. These include the launch of a Festival of Poetry and Performance, which will coincide with National Poetry Day on Thursday, 6th October, and the new Young Adult Fiction Festival.

And in February 2017, a new Festival of Written Words will be launched and will form part of the Wordpool programme.  The event will see a range of well-known and emerging authors visiting Blackpool.

Wordpool works with a wide range of partners to make the Festival a success including The Grand Theatre, the Winter Gardens, Grundy Art Gallery, Fylde Coast Youth Dance and Aspire Youth Dance companies, Save Our Stories, Aunty Social, Storytellers Inc., Better Start, Family Learning, Friends of Stanley Park, local schools and colleges and the Blackpool Museum Project.

All children must be accompanied by an adult at the family event on Saturday, 2nd July. The event will take place rain or shine but check online for updates in case of severe weather head over to our website.