News & Press

PoetryQuest Festival
7th-9th July 2010, Buck Hill, Kensington Gardens

On 7th July, HRH The Duchess of Cornwall attended the opening of the PoetryQuest Festival in Kensington Gardens. The Festival was organised by Children & the Arts, and supported by Bank of America Merrill Lynch. It was the culmination of a nine-month poetry and visual art project, PoetryQuest, which was supported by Van Cleef & Arpels and the Foyle Foundation.

The Duchess read an extract from one of her favourite childhood poems, Matilda by Hilaire Belloc, and was followed on stage by Children & the Arts Ambassador Adrian Lester and Lolita Chakrabarti. Also on stage was 10-year-old Macaulay Morgan from Gaellifaelog Primary, Merthyr Tydfil, who read a poem created as part of his work on the PoetryQuest project.

Speaking about the Festival, Jonathan Moulds, president, Europe, Bank of America Merrill Lynch said: “We are delighted to support the Children & the Arts PoetryQuest Festival. It’s a wonderful demonstration of the inspirational power of the arts that enables the children involved to come together to share and celebrate their experiences and creative work.”

PoetryQuest is a new project for Children & the Arts and since September 2009 has linked four Arts Centres around the country with 16 primary schools, introducing almost 1000 children aged between 9-11 to a local arts venue and epic poetry. The PoetryQuest Festival brought together the schools involved in PoetryQuest to celebrate their work.

With many thanks to The Royal Parks for all their support for the festival in Kensington Gardens.

For more information about PoetryQuest, visit the project page.