{"id":542,"date":"2018-02-15T12:11:06","date_gmt":"2018-02-15T12:11:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/?p=542"},"modified":"2018-02-12T12:36:13","modified_gmt":"2018-02-12T12:36:13","slug":"a-place-at-the-table-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/a-place-at-the-table-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"A Place at the Table 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

On 6th<\/span>\u00a0February 2018, thanks to a bursary from CILIP North East,<\/a> I attended Inclusive Minds\u2019<\/a> third annual A Place at the Table<\/a><\/em> event at Penguin Random House in London. A Place at the Table<\/em> aims to provide a space for the children\u2019s book industry to share best practice around inclusion and diversity and commit to taking practical actions to effect change. In this blog post, I\u2019ll be reflecting on the day and outlining some of the actions that Seven Stories: The National Centre for Children’s Books<\/a> and Newcastle University<\/a> are taking through the Vital North Partnership\u2026<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Author Juno Dawson,<\/a> in her opening keynote, celebrated how far the publishing industry has come since the first A Place at the Table<\/em> event in 2016.<\/a> She mentioned lots of amazing books and authors \u2013 from Patrice Lawrence\u2019s prize-winning debut Orangeboy,<\/em><\/a> to Angie Thomas\u2019s bestselling The Hate U Give <\/em><\/a>\u2013 and new initiatives like CILIP\u2019s current diversity review of the Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Awards<\/a>. I noted lots of books I want to read \u2013 including Juno\u2019s!<\/p>\n

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Author Juno Dawson opened the A Place at the Table event. Image: Inclusive Minds<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Then there were the roundtable and forum discussions, where we discussed barriers to authentic inclusion, and identified ways to shift these. For Seven Stories, the artform of children\u2019s literature is at the heart of everything they do \u2013 and it\u2019s by going to events like this that they can flag up with publishers that inclusion is fundamental to the national story they aim to tell. Seven Stories\u2019 workforce (like that of many arts organisations) is not particularly diverse \u2013 they\u2019re aiming to shift that barrier through targeted pathways to work programmes from 2018 to 2022.<\/p>\n

Highlights of the day for me were hearing from Year 10 pupil Jarvia, one of Inclusive Minds\u2019 Ambassadors<\/a>, about her reading experiences \u2013 she spoke about reading new writing on Wattpad<\/a> as she feels it\u2019s less filtered \u2013 and I loved hearing Jay Hulme\u2019s<\/a> \u201cangry trans\u201d<\/em> performance poetry (his description!):<\/p>\n