Thanks from Hive in 2016….

Wow, what a start to Hive activity!  We’ve had a very busy, buzzy autumn and are about to take a break to take stock and evaluate before we start planning activity for the new year.

If you’re been involved in Hive this year, a big thank you for your support and for caring about young writers in South Yorkshire  – thanks to literature and culture promoters and supporters: Hassun El Zaffar, Rachel Bower (Verse Matters), Maxine Greaves (Sheffield Hallam University), Jen Booth, Grimm & Co., other loud and quiet young writer encouragers, room givers (regular support from Sheffield and Barnsley Central Libraries, Sheffield Hallam University, Myplace Rotherham, Darts at the Point, Doncaster, the Off the Shelf Festival of Words for supporting our first Writers’ Day, and our unbelievably successful first open mic (35 young performers did their thing!), alongside the wonderful Rachel Bower and Verse Matters.

Thanks to visiting and supporting writers Saju Ahmed, Anthony Anxagorou, Joelle Taylor, Clare Shaw and Andy Cook for doing performances, workshops and interviews and generally inspiring young writers. All that supported Off the Shelf’s Youth Word Up (amoung the not yet mentioned -Dominic Heslop and Simon Hyacinth from FURD/U-Mix).

And thanks to our formal and steering partners for all your support getting Hive off the ground and into flight!

Most importantly, thanks and well done to all the young writers who have bravely shared their words to strangers (often for the first time!), asked interesting questions to writers, experimented with new writing, submitted work for the first time, supported peers, and buzzed around Hive making new friends and connections across the region.

A longer blog post to follow with more of the detail, this is just to say a big, warm and much appreciated thanks! 🙂

And don’t forget, our South Yorkshire groups are in full swing if there’re any young writers out there wanting to join, get in touch! And Hive is open for submissions of work to our first anthology until 26th Nov 2016. All info here.