Celebrating the most successful Wimbledon BookFest yet!
We celebrated our most successful Festival to date, seeing a huge increase in our audiences of over 15,000 people.
Wimbledon BookFest celebrates its most successful event ever as Principal Partner, University of Roehampton broadens their support for the Festival for another year, to mark the tenth anniversary of the partnership.
Ticket sales grew by sixteen percent on 2023, with 15,000 people attending, including 3,500 school children from 32 South London schools, making this year’s Festival the biggest in its seventeen-year history. This year also saw significant audience growth at the accessible, community centred venue, Merton Arts Space at Wimbledon Library, which welcomed many first-time festival goers this year. Festival bookseller Waterstones reported a 92% increase in growth on book sales this year.
Fiona Razvi, Festival Founder and Director said:
“In what has been an incredibly challenging year for book festivals with the withdrawal of key sponsorship it is so encouraging to see the audience appetite for the collective sharing of stories only growing. This year we saw a shift in audience attendance with over half of our audience being first time visitors. Now in our second year working with Merton Libraries and the Lahore Literary Festival we are seeing a shift in the demographic of our audiences which is key to being a festival that serves its community. Book festivals, like most arts models, need sponsors and philanthropy to work and we are actively seeking sponsorship from companies who see the value of literature and stories in our cultural lives. Our Education Programme was a real highlight this year and we are delighted that University of Roehampton continues to support our work, including our schools programme, so that we can develop our vital, life-enhancing work with children and young people.”
As lead education partner, University of Roehampton supports the Festival’s thriving education programme, which aims to improve literacy, develop a lifelong love of reading and nurture creativity, engaging over 10,000 children and young people from schools across South London annually. This year’s highlights included a series of author events headlined by Tim Peake, Joseph Coelho, Jeffrey Boakye and US Marvel and YA author Samira Ahmed; and the annual Young Writers Competition which saw entries from 5,100 students from 51 South London primary and secondary schools, with the judging panel chaired by Dr Amy Waite, Lecturer in the department of English and Creative Writing at University of Roehampton.
This year’s Festival saw a new initiative, the BookFest Academy, which provides journalism and stewarding opportunities for sixth formers; whilst students from University of Roehampton gained valuable experience in film, social media and photography as they worked alongside professional event producers, photographers and media specialists.
