What are you doing for National Writing Day 2018?
The second annual celebration of writing is designed to inspire people across the UK to write. We’ll be celebrating this important day at the All Party Parliamentary Writers’ Group (APWG) summer reception at the House of Commons on 27 June.
Speakers at the event will include National Writing Day ambassador and Children’s Laureate, Lauren Child, Mónica Parle from First Story, the co-founders of National Writing Day, Jonathan Douglas from the National Literacy Trust, and Chair of ALCS, Tony Bradman. Our parliamentary host will be Chair of the APWG, Rt Hon John Whittingdale OBE MP.
The event will include the presentation of prizes to the winner of this year’s Copyright Knights and Plagiarism Pirates competition that was sponsored by ALCS and run by the National Literacy Trust. This writing competition aims to help children learn the concepts of copyright and plagiarism in an enjoyable and memorable way. We think it’s important that children learn about the dos and don’ts of copyright at a young age, and by using fun ideas and activities to incorporate the competition into class time we hope to create a more lasting idea of copyright for kids.
As well as these exciting celebrations of young children and their writing, we will also be revealing the results of the latest Authors’ Earnings survey commissioned by ALCS. We ran the survey earlier this year as a follow up to our 2015 review. With the last set of results demonstrating that authors’ incomes fell significantly below the Joseph Roundtree Minimum Income Standard (MIS), we’re interested to see what the new results tell us.
National Writing Day is led by First Story, a national charity that’s looking to change lives through the power of writing. They bring professional writers into schools in low-income communities to work with teachers and students to support creativity and communication skills. As part of National Writing Day, they’ve created a short video about the importance of encouraging writing in young people and have garnered support and pooled resources from several national writing organisations including the National Literacy Trust, the Royal Society of Literature and ALCS to help promote their message.
To see all our copyright resources, visit our copyright education page.
Want to get involved? Further information on National Writing Day and details of events in your area can be found here.
