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A round-up of what happened at the 2016 East Dulwich Literary Festival, 4-8 July.

Year 8 students took part in an enterprise workshop run by local bookshop, Tales on Moon Lane. Girls worked in small teams to create a business plan for a pop-up bookstore.

Last year, this idea was so strong that we created our own permanent bookshop at the school, Tales on the Rye. This year, students opened a pop-up bookstore at Harris Primary, East Dulwich on Thursday 7 July (pictured). Students carefully chose a selection of books for children in reception, Year 1 and their parents.

Author Sandra Agard regaled the whole of Year 7 with her storytelling performance, Telling Tales. She shared with them some of her memories of 'growing up', the theme of this year's festival.  She also helped students think about what they might put in the school time capsule, before it’s buried later in the week as part of the festival.

Dr Leila Kamali gave her final lecture in a series on Black British Poetry, which has been running for a number of weeks following a visit to Goldsmith’s University by Year 9.  As a lecturer and contributor to the Caribbean and Diaspora Centre, Dr Kamali introduced us to some brilliant poetry, some of which is rooted in local history, such as the New Cross fire. This was a valuable insight into modern and contemporary work by Black British writers that staff and students alike may not have encountered before.

As part of the literary festival we are also held a series of public events in the evening, which this year were hosted by the Ivy House, our local community-led pub. Tuesday night was story telling with Spark London (pictured), who produce a popular storytelling podcast and hold nights across London.  We heard from seven story tellers, whose tales related to the theme of 'growing up' and included a huge range of humour, emotion and 'lessons learned'.

There was also live music by Poppy Ajudha and a literary pub quiz hosted by English teacher and Head of Wider Opportunities, Mr Brown.

As part of the festival the Ivy House also exhibited work by GCSE and A-level art students from Harris Girls' Academy East Dulwich (see picture). The standard was incredibly high and members of the public have approached staff to impress how much they love the exhibition.

Local author Marianne Kavanagh visited the school to talk to students, and we also created and performed our version of Richard III, all done in one day!

Virginie Clarke, House Coordinator (Imperial)