Swindon Youth Festival of Literature 2024
Every year the librarians of the Swindon secondary schools collaborate and organise the Swindon Youth Festival of Literature – a celebration of everything book-ish with visits and workshops with authors, poets and illustrators. This year we celebrated the 17th year of this award-winning Festival.
Julian Sedgwick & Chie Kutsuwada
Our headline event at The Wyvern Theatre saw the year 10 Art and Graphics class along with some year 9 and 13 Manga mad students, gripped by Carnegie nominated author Julian Sedgwick and Manga artist Chie Kutsuwada. Fresh off the plane from Japan, both Julian and Chie had the audience gripped with ghost stories aplenty told in the context of how resilience and belief has helped the population recover from natural disaster and the grief associated with it. As Julian read from his hybrid prose-manga novel Tsunami Girl and 100 Tales from The Tokyo Ghose Cafe, and Chie live drew, you could hear a pin drop as the story unravelled and the drawing came to life before our very eyes. It was just incredible.
Paul Dowswell
Our keynote author in school on 11 November, Armistice Day, was historical fiction writer Paul Dowswell. Poignant, pertinent and powerful, Paul spoke to the whole of year 8 and 9, as well as delivering image-based writing workshops for year 7 students.
Ash Dickinson
Performance slam poet and Festival favourite Ash Dickinson inspired year 7 students to find their inner poet with his entertaining and interactive workshop. Students demonstrated their passion for poetry with plenty of performers delivering their Spanish Shadorma and Six Wheeler’s. The Maths teachers couldn’t resist the numbers and joined in too, with Mr Millichap setting the standard by performing his own prime number themed poem much to the amusement of the year 7’s!
Matt Oldfield
Author of The Ultimate Football Heroes series of books, Matt Oldfield, became our ‘Ultimate Author Hero’ when he captivated 300 year 5’s from our partner primary schools, as well as the whole of year 7 with his high energy presentation. Talking about his own journey from the playground to being an author, he also spoke about how he writes about world class footballers and how they journeyed from the playground to the pitch, and bounced back from setbacks along the way. We’re hoping for a credit when Matt’s next book about Maradona is published after his research session in the library fuelled by Jammy Dodgers
Book Quiz
The Ridgeway librarians were delighted to host the finale of LitFest week: the hotly contested Inter School Book Quiz. 12 schools entered teams of 6 students from years 7 to 9, to answer 14 rounds of questions all linked to books from Manga to Music, and from Roald Dahl to Reading with Pride. Our heads of school, Freya and Abdel were fabulous quiz leaders and the Festival sponsors, Bower Bailey Solicitors came to present the awards after an extremely close contest to…
- 3rd Place: The Ridgeway School & 6th Form (66 points)
- 2nd Place: Kingsdown School (68 points)
- 1st Place: Lydiard Park Academy (69 points)
It was a fabulous week celebrating everything book-ish. A massive thank you to everyone that helped, including our wonderful Community Champions.
Mrs Day & Mrs Dry, LRC Managers
House X-Country - 'The MacMillan Mile' Proves a Great Success!
For this year’s House X-Country, we decided to change things up a bit and make it more like... The Great South and North Run’s, Race for Life or London Marathon! The idea was to get each Year group across Y7 – Y9 and our Y10 GCSE PE students, to get some sponsorship or make a donation for MacMillian Cancer Support.
As per usual, our students exceeded all expectations and were truly superb! walking, jogging or running their House X-Country or baking cakes for our ‘House Bakeoff’ to contribute to our final total!
On the following days they ran their X-Country!
- Year 7 – Periods 3 and 4 – Wednesday 6th November
- Year 8 – Periods 3 and 4 – Tuesday 5th November
- Year 9 & Y10 GCSE PE – Period 2 – Thursday 7th November
They raised £1200.00 for an amazing cause! Thank you students & parents, for your wonderful support!
House X-Country Results 2024
The following students were outstanding!
| Year 7 Boys | Year 7 Girls |
| 1st – Josh Mills 7A1 | 1st – Harriet Jones 7A1 |
| 2nd – Akwasi Amaoki 7B1 | 2nd – Georgia Burridge 7K2 |
| 3rd – Luca Wallace 7A1 | 3rd – Billie Nott 7K2 |
| 4th – Malakai Marecheau 7K1 | 4th – Daisy Wheeler 7A1 |
| 5th – Ellis Paviour 7S2 | 5th – Ophelia Hallam 7K1 |
| 6th – Kian Miller-Hogg | 6th – Charlotte Domm 7A2 |
| Year 8 Girls | Year 8 Boys |
| 1st – Charissa Griffiths-Clack 8K2 | 1st – Harvey Denton 8B2 |
| 2nd – Charlotte Fuller 8S1 | 2nd – Romi Ohlson-Price 8B2 |
| 3rd – Amelia Too 8A2 | 3rd – Byron Cameron Morrison 8A3 |
| 4th – Emily Owen -8K3 | 4th – Tom Robinson 8B2 |
| 5th – Tash Jacka 8K2 | 5th – Ollie Wishart 8B1 |
| 6th – Day Green 8S2 | 6th – Jasper Lowbridge 8A3 |
| Year 9 Girls | Year 9 Boys |
| 1st – Freya McMeeking 9K1 | 1st – Finley Kuklinski 9S1 |
| 2nd – Ellie Charlesworth 9K1 | 2nd – Joseph Kemble 9B2 |
| 3rd – Esha Bhalerao 9K1 | 3rd – Jake Stothard 9S1 |
| 4th – Imogen Keen 9K2 | 4th – Connall McCormack 9B2 |
| 5th – Evie Miller 9B3 | 5th – Luke Fitchett 9S1 |
| 6th – Evie Simpson 9B3 | 6th – Joshua Taylor 9S2 |
Our House X-Country, leads us into the Swindon Schools X-Country held at Nova Hreod on Saturday 16th November. With 13 Secondary school competing across Swindon, the competition is stronger than ever, where the top 6 students from each school compete for the top team in each category!
Over 60 students represented Ridgeway and each one was superb! Once again, they delivered some fantastic individual and team performances!
Y7 Girls are Runners Up! Harriet Jones came 4th in the Y7 Girls race, supported by Amelia Dugdale 18th,Daisy Wheeler 22nd, Ophelia Hallam 24th, Lara Smague 32nd and Isla Simms 39th earning us the Team score of 139 points – 2nd Placed Team
In Year 7, Josh Mills came 23rd, Henry Clarke 27th and Archie Queenan 28th in the boys race.
Year 8 & Year 9 Girls and Boys win the day too!
The Y8 and 9 Girls stole the show by taking the first 4 places in the Y8/9 Girls race!! Quite incredible were Charissa Griffiths-Clack 1st (Y8), Freya McMeeking 2nd, Ellie Charlesworth 3rd, Esha Bhalerao 4th, Charlotte Fuller 11th and Evie Miller 21st were the winning Team with a score of 42!
Imogen Keen 24th, Amelia Too 26th and Tash Jacka 30th were also notable performances in the biggest school team across all 13 schools present!
Not to be outdone, the Y8 and 9 Boys came 1st in the team event, thanks to great runs by Finley Kuklinski 3rd, Luke Fitchett 14th, Joseph Kemble 15th, Jude Stothard 18th, Romi Ohlson-Price 20th and Byron Morrison 40th. Team score 110 – 1st Place!
In the Y10/11 Boys race Ben Charlesworth came 2nd, Charlie Owen 8th and Jack Day 22nd were superb! Eliza Nunn 19th and Tilly Owers 22nd epitomised the fantastic effort and commitment shown by all of our athletes.
All runners finishing in the Top 12 will go forward to represent Swindon at the Wiltshire Schools X-Country held at Sheldon School in Chippenham in January.
Congratulations to the following students who will represent Swindon in January.
- Hariett Jones (Y7)
- Charissa Griffiths-Clack (Y8)
- Charlotte Fuller (Y8)
- Freya McMeeking (Y9)
- Ellie Charlesworth (Y9)
- Esha Bhalerao (Y9)
- Finley Kuklinski (Y9)
- Ben Charlesworth (Y11)
- Charlie Owen (Y11)
Well Done All involved! - PE Team
Kick Boxing Champion
We would also like to congratulate Norman who is the British Champion Kick Boxer. He won the ISKA British championships. This was in kick boxing and means he now goes on to qualify for the European championships in Malta next year. Congratulations.
Mrs R Hill
