Club members will explore a breadth of activities including writing and performing poetry, short-fiction, blogging, zine-making, podcasting and illustration. They will visit local cultural venues and creative spaces, and exhibit nationwide at the Essex Book Festival and the Summer Show at Somerset House.

Generating new and exciting work, Club members will find themselves creating media that helps them find their voice and share their ideas. We can’t wait to hear what they have to say!

Open to 13–16-year-olds.

Club dates:
13 September 2025 – 28 March 2026
Saturdays, 10:00am – 12:30pm

Location:
Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford Campus, Bishop Hall Lane, Chelmsford, CM1 1SQ

Join the club at saturday-club.org/club/essex-book-festival-aru-writing-talking/

About National Saturday Club

Young people across the country are spending Saturday mornings at their local university, college or museum discovering subjects they love. Saturday Clubs are open to 13–16-year-olds of all abilities and are free to attend.

Joining the National Saturday Club is a unique opportunity to learn new skills, discover talents, meet new people, and find out more about further education, higher education and rewarding careers.

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In a future where a powerful system of trials decides people’s fate, a group of young individuals must confront intense moral dilemmas and make life-altering choices. Tackling themes of the climate crisis, this thought-provoking production is driven by the young cast in every aspect. Don’t miss your chance to support tomorrow’s theatre stars.

The Trials
By Dawn King – award-winning writer for theatre, film, and radio.
Headgate Young Company

10th – 13th September 2025 7.45pm
Saturday Mat. 2.30pm

Tickets £15, £10 (under 21)

Headgate Theatre, 14 Chapel Street North, Colchester, CO2 7AT

Book online at headgatetheatre.co.uk or contact the Box Office 01206 366000 or tickets@headgatetheatre.co.uk.

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Saturday 19th July 2025, 12:00PM – 6:00PM

Experience a fiery fusion of wellness, writing, time in nature, music and food that truly nourishes at the first ever extravaganza – “Soul and Sizzle Fest”

The aim is that “you leave happier than when you arrived” having experienced something new, taken time to pause, enjoyed the opportunity to socialise with like minded individuals. The very ethos of all that the venue stands for.

Providing you with ways to activate and release your ‘happy hormones’ during the day – all of which are designed to enhance your well-being.

It’s going to be a new kind of vibe!

Find out more and book tickets at ticketsource.co.uk/angel-pavilion/soul-sizzle-fest/e-ddyvoe.

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Fun timed challenges during each session.

Sunday 20th July
Session times:
10.00am to 11.00am
11.30am to 12.30pm
1.30pm to 2.30pm
3.00pm to 4.00pm

Tickets £20 for one adult plus one child.

Book tickets at layermarneytower.co.uk/events/brick-day/.

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For those unable to join us on Sunday, Walk with Words is a new interactive walking route connecting Colchester City, University of Essex and Greenstead. Arranged on 16 posts, a QR code geo-locates content offering walkers a diverse mix of materials inspired by the journey.

The competition invites people to take inspiration from any moment on the walk or surrounding area to create content under the 2025 theme of ‘Communities within Communities’. It’s open to all ages and abilities, and can be anything from a piece of flash fiction to a Haiku poem, a video clip to a spoken word performance, or a short-story to a bite-size memoir.

Participating not only offers entrants the opportunity to be featured on the Walk with Words digital platform but also a shot at the grand prize of £150. Learn more and submit your work by the new date of Monday 1st September 2025 by visiting walkwithwords.co.uk.

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First up, is our special day Spirits, Salons & Sanctuary, which will be taking place this Saturday in one of Colchester’s oldest sites of sanctuary, St Leonard-at-the-Hythe Church.

Sanctuary is an ancient right. But what does it mean today? Drawing on a lifetime of engagement with literature, myth, history and tradition from different cultures, Marina Warner’s new book Sanctuary is an ambitious attempt to grapple with the sharpest questions that we are facing in today’s world of global turmoil.

Marina will be joined by two other writers at St Leonard’s. These include poet/novelist Philip Terry who will be discussing Dante’s Purgatorio, the sequel to his Dante’s Inferno (2014). Set on Mersea Island with the unlikely backdrop of an Essex ‘Alp’ hewn out of Flexible Rock Substitute, and an even more unlikely cast of characters that includes Grayson Perry, Rachela Whiteread, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, expect the unexpected in this inspired reimagining of ‘Purgatoria’.

Followed by poet/novelist writer Clare Pollard who will be talking to fellow writer Holly Pester about her latest novel The Modern Fairies, which has just been awarded the inaugural Tadeusz Bradecki Prize for its ‘history and magic, novelistic depth and sharpness of fable’.

Sunday takes us to The Minories for a feast of authors, artists, workshops, and storytelling. Events include Tony Peake talking about his biography of his old friend Derek Jarman, and Maggi Hambling chatting to art critic and novelist James Cahill about his latest novel The Violet Hour that has been described by Stephen Fry as ‘the best novel I have read for ages … masterly’.

The Minories Garden, meanwhile, will be jam-packed with storytellers, including BBC Essex’s Rob Jelly, who will be reading Spike Milligan’s BadJelly the Witch, and a variety of drop-in workshops including traditional ink-making and eco-printing with artist Zoe Martin, Twinkle Twinkle willow star weaving with master weaver and storyteller Glenys Newton, spice-painting with artist Lora Aziz, and more. The excellent news is that it’s all free!

See you there!

The post It’s All Happening In Colchester This Weekend… appeared first on Essex Book Festival.

Radhika will be leading participants on a specially-curated culinary journey exploring how historical trade routes, migration, and colonial pathways have shaped the way we cook and eat, uncovering the cultural connections behind everyday ingredients and iconic dishes via storytelling and delicious tasting plates.

A rich Kenyan kidney bean and coconut stew, Tandoori Patatas Bravas, an Indonesian pineapple Rojak salad, plus a fragrant Shirin Pulao from Azerbaijan, a sweet, saffron-scented rice dish inspired by the Silk Route, will definitely tickle the taste buds.

There are very limited tickets for this event, so make sure you have yours.

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This week took us to Chelmsford Cathedral for Alison Weir’s author talk, which, focusing on her latest novel The Cardinal, set sail in Tudor Ipswich, the birthplace of chief protagonist Thomas Wolsey, then travelled to Oxford, across the Channel to Calais, and remarkably landed in the lavish court of Henry VIII. Before, that is, the Cardinal’s well-documented dramatic fall from grace, and subsequent inglorious death at Leicester Abbey. Given the subject matter, we can’t think of a more appropriate venue for Alison’s event.

Later this week we are travelling to Witham Library for the annual Dorothy L Sayers Lecture. Sunday Times bestseller crime-writer Jane Casey will introduce her latest gripping new thriller featuring DS Maeve Kerrigan and DI Josh Derwent, The Secret Room.

We are then heading back to Chelmsford, this time to Anglia Ruskin University, for our event with multi-award-winning historian Lucy Hughes-Hallett. Lucy will be talking about her fascinating new book The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham, described as ‘Epic’ by Olivia Laing and ‘Brilliant’ by Colm Tobin.

This week’s travels conclude at Castle Hedingham where Chloe Dalton of Raising Hare fame and Essex-based wild writer James Canton will be talking to William Sieghart, the Founder of the Forward Prize and The Poetry Pharmacy, as part of our activities at EA Festival at Hedingham Castle.

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One event very much in our sights is ‘How to Approach an Island: Walking the Broomway‘, which is taking place next Sunday and marks the second in our series of Radical Islands events this June.

Led by artist Helen Galliano of The Arbonauts, a site-specific performance company, and local farmer John Burroughs, ‘How to Approach an Island’ will involve a one-of-a-kind guided walk along Essex’s most legendary coastal route, the Broomway, to Foulness Island. This will be followed by a creative island-focussed brain-storming dinner at Chalkwell Hall in Southend. In the words of our hosts – prepare to get your feet wet!

Heading Indoors

Heading indoors, there are still a few tickets left for our two University events: Shami Chakrabarti at Anglia Ruskin University on Thursday night and Diane Abbott at University of Essex on Friday.

And likewise, for our Criminally Good Day at Maldon Town Hall on Sunday, which includes debut crime-writer Sarah Hornsley talking about her bone-chillingly good thriller Bad Blood set in her home-town Maldon.

Meanwhile, just across the road from Maldon Town Hall, Thomas Plume Library, an absolute Essex gem and one of the oldest reference libraries in the country still housed in the room created for it in 1704 on the first floor of the Plume Building, will be open to coincide with our Criminally Good Day. We love libraries and Thomas Plume more than warms the cockles.

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Currently on display at Red Lion Books, Colchester, the coat will take 6 days from 1st to 6th June to walk from Colchester to Southend via Wivenhoe, Tiptree, Maldon, South Woodham Ferrers and Rochford.

The Coat of Hopes is a patchwork coat on an ongoing walking pilgrimage through the UK towards the end of the climate and ecological emergency.

It has been made by and worn and walked by many hundreds of people on a journey on foot of around 1500 miles so far. It carries people’s hopes for the places they live, sewn into the blanket patches of which it is made.

Find out more at coatofhopes.uk/.

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