Audience sampling has shown that only about 5% of the people attending the Words by the Water festival at the Theatre by the Lake in Keswick are aged between 17 and 24.
To try to increase the number of students and other young people attending, the organisers have decided to offer a bursary of free tickets to encourage them to come along this year, when the festival runs from 2-11 March – a great time to be in the Lake District, as the fells are still relatively empty.
The scheme welcomes applications from anybody aged 17-24, and those who succeed will be able to get in free to up to 10 events of them choice. The festival director Kay Dunbar explains:
The bursary scheme is for youngsters who are passionate about writing and new ideas; excited about art, travel, philosophy, politics and current affairs; or simply seeking inspiration. It's a brilliant opportunity to engage with new ideas and the people who take part in the bursary scheme have a great time.
This year's line up has plenty to appeal to people of any age, and around 14,000 people attend at least one of the events each year. Amongst around 100 sessions, you can find everything from Tam Dalyell talking about his autobiography, The Importance of Being Awkward, Craig Brown on Beyond Parody, Claire Tomalin on Dickens and a two hander between recent Labour MPs Bob Marshall-Andrews and Chris Mullin. Other delights include stand-up comedian Shappi Khorsandi, a poetry competition judged by Helen Dunmore, Fiona MacCarthy on Edward Burne-Jones, local Tory MP Rory Stewart on The Mood of Britain, Stanley Wells on Shakespeare, Sex & Love and Penelope Lively on reading addiction.
The art critic William Feaver wrote the book The Pitmen Painters on which Lee Hall based his play, and he'll be talking about the remarkable group of Ashington miners who became artists. The seventh John Murray of publishers John Murray is discussing the journal Thomas Gray kept of his tour of the Lake District in 1769, arguably one of the earliest pieces of modern travel writing.
A few years later Joseph Farington RA followed in his tracks ,painting the scenes Gray described, but it took nearly another 250 years for John Murray to put the two works together on one book. The Lancastrian Farington's works were hugely popular in their day, and his Views of the Lakes of Cumberland and Westmorland, published in 1785, was one of the things that first made the beauties of the area more widely known.
With art, politics, comedy, literature, philosophy, food, travel and poetry all on the menu, it would be difficult to find anybody of any age who wouldn't be inspired by something here.
Those interested in more information about the Words by the Water young people's Bursary Scheme should contact Alice Ling at alice.ling@wayswithwords.co.uk or 01803 867373.
