Our story so far...

Newark Book Festival is a not for profit community organisation that launched in 2017 following on from Books in the Castle in Newark-On-Trent, Nottinghamshire, UK. Working with beautiful venues across Newark, the Festival aims to inspire and challenge imaginations, bringing the love of stories, creativity and words to our wonderful town. Since 2017 the Festival has continued to grow to meet demand, reaching over 10,000 people of all ages. The Festival now includes a long weekend in July (9-12th 2020), a school's programme, Year round Friends scheme, volunteer programmes, competitions, exhibitions and new for 2020 Festival On Tour days in the district.

To truly get a feel for our wonderful friendly festival and all that we do please watch our film.

Why are we fundraising and how will it help?

We need to grow our budgets to fulfil our ambitions and the desires of our communities and visitors, ensuring Fair Pay for all, building workshop and event possibilities, to allow our schools and family programmes to grow but most importantly we need to ensure our survival. Following a bump in the road over Christmas, we have a much larger than expected funding target to meet. This means we really need You! The Crowd...to help us.

Overall we need to raise between £20,000-£40,000 - between our crowd funding campaigns, Sponsorship opportunities and Friends of the Festival. This money does not just fund a weekend, but year round costs from ensuring we have staffing to marketing, schools programmes, and Friends activities. It will allow us to continue to programme a vast array of amazing, exciting and engaging festival events covering artistic commissions, wellbeing workshops, author events, literature villages, family events and more. Every penny raised goes directly to the Festival - paying people, artists, or commissioning local services and products.

Our targeted amount to fundraise is on top of our already secured funding - so big thanks to those current funders, partners and sponsors who are already supporting us, including Newark & Sherwood District Council, Newark Town Council, Nottinghamshire County Council, Newark College, Tallents Solicitors, Creative Apostrophe, Duncan & Toplis, Aura Business Centre and our Friends of the Festival (and those yet to come!).

Should You, The Crowd be truly amazing and we even go over our target, fear not, as we said every penny goes to the continuation of the Festival, it means we can stretch out longer into 2021 and beyond.

We want to establish this Festival forever....Do you want to be part of the future, be part of the plan? Never judge a book by its cover.

Please, donate today, and become a Newark Book Festival Lover (#newarkbookfestivallover)