Writers come together for Scribble Festival

Poet Lemn Sissay, MBE

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Cartwheel Arts’ Tell Us Another One project celebrated another year of promoting creative writing in Rochdale Oldham and Bury, with its second annual Scribble festival.

Tell Us Another One is a three-year creative writing project for adults across Greater Manchester, funded by the Arts Council and the National Lottery. It uses creative writing to help people gain confidence and express themselves, and to bring communities together.

This year’s festival, held at Oldham Library and Lifelong Learning Centre, was organised as part of RAW (Rhythm and Words 2012) a partnership between Cartwheel Arts, Oldham Coliseum and Oldham Libraries and Lifelong Learning.

The festival was an all-day event, attended by a diverse range of people from across Greater Manchester and beyond. During the day, there were creative writing workshops on different aspects of the theme “Rhythm”, led by writers Helen Clare, Steve Garside, Chanje Kunda, Shamshad Khan, Anjum Malik and Tony Walsh.

Participant Rima Ali said: “Had a lovely workshop with Anjum. Wrote my first poem!”

Poet and workshop leader Helen Clare said: “Who would have thought a workshop about heartbeats could have opened my heart so much.”

Participants also took to the stage to read their work, and the event was rounded off with sparkling evening performances from poets Dominic Berry, Chanje Kunda and the incomparable Lemn Sissay, MBE, the first poet commissioned to write for the 2012 Olympics.