City of Literature – The Spectacular Suit

I am delighted to announce that I will be running a Spectacular Suit event in Norwich on Friday 23rd May as part of the City of Literature Programme. My event will include an interactive storytelling session and you’ll also get the chance to colour your own spectacular suit! I absolutely love seeing the beautiful, creative suits that children design and I can’t wait to see what they come up with this time. If you would like to run a similar event at your festival, school or community group, please get in touch.

The Spectacular Suit, published by Scribble. Illustration © Hayley Wells, 2022.

Run as a partnership between the National Centre for Writing (NCW) and Norfolk & Norwich Festival (NNF), the City of Literature programme features more than 20 artists across 17 events — including book launches, lectures, reading spaces, a publishing fair and panel discussions. There are events for all ages and it’s set to be a wonderful weekend celebrating books and culture.

My event takes place in the historic Dragon Hall which actually featured in a project I did for NCW a few years back. I was commissioned to illustrate texts by twelve young people from NCW’s young writers group, which were formatted into a double-sided, concertina zine. I was really impressed by the imaginative creative writing and it was fun to illustrate scenes from a city that I have visited many times. Here are a few of my favourite illustrations from the project:

City of Stories: An anthology of writing. Commissioned by National Centre for Writing. Illustration © Hayley Wells, 2022.

City of Stories: An anthology of writing. Commissioned by National Centre for Writing. Illustration © Hayley Wells, 2022.