Warwick launches Freeflow Festival to celebrate literature and spoken word

The University of Warwick will be holding the Freeflow Festival on Wednesday 29th November for the first time. The event, supported by several outside organisations, is to be held in celebration of various literature, music and storytelling.

This event was made possible by the University’s partnership with Peters Fraser + Dunlop and The Sunday Times, in promotion of their ‘Young Writer of the Year Award’. The University will also support the programme by offering a bespoke 10-week residency for the award’s winner.

The University is hoping to explore a ‘mini kaleidoscope’ of the written and spoken word throughout the day with over ten events taking place across the entire campus, including debates, presentations and workshops looking at writing in its many forms. Warwick has thus invited ‘some of the best names in the literary world’, along with poets and rappers who have made appearances at Glastonbury. The festival is free; however, booking is required.

The event’s curator, Jane Furze, said: “We wanted to host a festival to highlight our collaboration with the Sunday Times/ Peter Fraser + Dunlop Young Writers Award and with the University of Warwick being passionate about encouraging and supporting emerging literary talent, we thought the Freeflow Festival was the perfect opportunity celebrate this.”

The aim of the Freeflow Festival is to explore and provoke and to celebrate the vibrancy of language within and beyond the curriculum.

Events on the programme associated with the written word are set to include opportunities to get feedback from top publishers on students’ own literary ideas, and speeches from world-renowned authors such as Owen Sheers on the challenges of his work and his inspiration.

For those interested in journalism, one of the talks will address the idea of ‘fake news’, inciting debates on a variety of questions: ‘Do we live in a time when the art of the lie is shaking the world as we know it? Does the power to evoke feelings now outweigh facts?’.

This talk will be headed by Matthew d’Ancona, a former deputy editor of The Sunday Telegraph, who will then lead an informal Q&A session later in the day.

For students looking for a lighter event, stand-up comedian and classicist Natalie Haynes will bring a combination of humour and ancient history to Warwick as a celebration of the spoken word.

The 2016 winner of the ‘Young Writer of the Year Award’ will also make an appearance at the event to discuss his own writing and to give an exclusive reading of his latest work in progress. There are currently five of the UK and Ireland’s ‘best young writers’ on the shortlist for the 2017 award, which can be found here.

The event will finish in the celebration of music and storytelling in Leamington Spa’s Assembly Rooms, where one of the UK’s leading spoken word shows ‘Tongue Fu’ will bring some of the sharpest poets, storytellers, rappers and musicians to Leamington. The event has been described by organisers as a ‘riotous experiment in live literature, music and improvisation’.