Local funding available for Book Week Scotland

Book Week Scotland has opened a fund for community groups to help them take part in the annual celebration with grants of £500 available to apply for. It is open to any local community group interested in taking part, from local colleges and charities to community radio and care homes.

Book Week Scotland (13–19 November 2023) is a week-long celebration of books and reading, with hundreds of events taking place online and in communities all over Scotland. This year’s theme is ‘adventure’.

The deadline to apply for the Book Week Scotland Fund is Friday 9 June at 5pm, and further info and the application form can be foundat bookweekscotland.com.

Examples of how the funding has been used previously include:

• Sunny Govan Community Radio ran a series of in-person writing workshops with Scottish author Victoria McNulty in 2021. The workshops were designed to bolster the confidence of people within the community, after the pandemic increased the strain on those socially isolated. They attracted a range of participants, from people who had experience of writing, and were much more confident, to those who had never written before.
• Orkney College placed 20 texts by Orcadian writers on to signs along the iconic St Magnus Way in 2020, and encouraged the local community to share creative responses to the pieces in purpose-built boxes along the route. The community responses were then used to inspire a new poem by local writer Yvonne Gray, who read the piece on BBC Radio Orkney during Book Week Scotland.
• In 2022, Women’s Aid East and Midlothian ran a writing workshop for sufferers of domestic abuse who were living in refuge accommodation. Together with workshop facilitator and storyteller, Lorna Hill, Women’s Aid introduced the participants to creative writing processes that allowed them to produce their own work. They also curated a selection of books, short stories and poetry that the participants could enjoy in their own time. The response to the workshop was fantastic, with participants praising the supportive environment and how encouraging it was to have produced their own stories.