ABOUT THE IPSWICH FESTIVAL


The Ipswich Festival of Children’s Literature

The biennial Ipswich Festival of Children’s began in 1995 providing FREE sessions for children and low cost session for adults and young adults with an interest in children’s literature such as teachers, librarians, and emerging writers and illustrators.

The festival aims to increase an awareness of the value of the arts in relation to writing and illustration and help build and maintain increased audiences for children’s literature. We plan to inspire young people to buy and read more books and gain an appreciation of the processes involved in writing and illustrating. We also aim to enthuse teachers and parents about the value of stories and encourage them to promote literature to young people.


The theme of One World, Many Stories will be woven throughout the festival program, providing opportunities to come face to face with some of Australia’s finest creators of contemporary spoken, written and visual texts at this year’s Ipswich Festival of Children’s Literature.

The Ipswich Festival is organized and funded mainly by the Ipswich District Teacher-Librarian Network.

This year the Festival will be officially opened at St Paul’s Hall on Saturday 3rd September, followed by an afternoon tea and viewing of an exhibition of students’ art work at the Ipswich Community Gallery. One World, Many Stories: The Mirror Project is an exhibition created by children in response to the illustrations in Jeannie Baker’s book Mirror. The original artwork from Mirror will also be on display in the Children’s Gallery in Ipswich Art Gallery from 18 July until 2 October. Viewing the art work will be part of the sessions conducted at Ipswich Art Gallery.

The Book Garden is the official bookseller at the Festival in Ipswich at the Civic Centre and at Woodlands of Marburg. The Ipswich Art Gallery will also have books by Jeannie Baker and a Teacher’s Kit for Mirror for sale.

There will be a display of art work by participating illustrators set up by Books Illustrated.
Exhibition art work will be on sale throughout the Festival at Woodlands of Marburg.

Venues for Literature Festival
Primary school aged children can meet authors and illustrators in the Ipswich Library, Civic Centre venues, Ipswich Art Gallery, Ipswich Community Gallery, Masonic Hall and CWA Hall.

We acknowledge the support of Ipswich Library and Information Services, Ipswich Art Gallery and Ipswich Civic Centre in providing venues at reduced rates or free of cost.

The main venue is Woodlands of Marburg, our major sponsor. Set in spacious grounds, the beautiful country setting of Woodlands is 45 minutes from Brisbane and Toowoomba and 15 minutes from Ipswich. Here students will be able to choose from many concurrent sessions.

This is also the venue for all weekend events for adults and young adults.

This year the Ipswich Art Gallery will host a one day conference with keynote address by Jeannie Baker and provide the opportunity to take part in workshops with key illustrators of children’s books.

(c) Illustration courtesy of the IPSWICH DISTRICT TEACHER-LIBRARIAN NETWORK