Our mission is to create a fun, imaginative annual festival, which both celebrates and demonstrates the power of the written and spoken word. We aim to enrich the lives of local people and visitors, and by strengthening our communities we aim to make a pro-active, positive contribution to Medway’s future as a centre of cultural excellence. In providing high quality events, workshops, forums and performances with literature development at their heart, our goal is to give all those who come into contact with the festival a transformative experience of the power of words.

We actively encourage and support creative writing including poetry, fiction, life writing, storytelling, spoken word, writing for children, film and theatre – any medium that has writing at its core. To engage, entertain and inspire our audiences we offer live performances that may include music, dance and interactive story gaming. We want to explore creative opportunities for communities through literature.

We aim to give opportunities to local writers to share their work and find new audiences, as well as bring established names to Medway. We believe this will introduce the general public to what’s on offer locally, as we would promote the programme as a whole to the audiences at the larger, headline events.

As a new festival, we will take risks and provide the conditions for writers to make bold, ambitious work, such as A Night at the Theatre, The Skywatcher Investigation and Alice, which were three of the main events in our inaugural festival.

We aim to create partnerships that will enable us to bring events into schools, libraries, and to other, less obvious venues for site specific performance. We encourage collaboration across various art forms and ultimately, would like to receive funding that will allow us to commission top quality work to complement the high quality voluntary work being undertaken.

Funding will allow us to build productive and dynamic relationships between libraries and readers, particularly in areas of low engagement, with a programme to bring great works to life in libraries and encourage more borrowers.

Engaging families and offering events both parents and children can enjoy together is a high priority, as seen with The Skywatcher Investigation and Alice.

We are for readers, writers and like minds, bringing writers and performers together in order to engage and inspire both new and existing audiences, and leading to increased well being and literacy skills throughout Medway, Kent and beyond.

EQUALITY AND DIVERSITY STATEMENT

The Rochester Literature Festival is committed to the principles of fairness, consistency, meritocracy and equality of opportunity. No persons involved as a volunteer, professional performer or audience member will be discriminated against, regardless of their age, colour, disability, ethnicity, gender or gender identity, race, religion or belief and/or sexual orientation.