KAA LitFest 2025

by Vashti Turner  on March 31, 2025  in  Events Literacy

From Monday 24th March to Friday 28th March, KAA celebrated everything literature related with our annual Literary Festival (LitFest 2025!).

The week included workshops, literary careers panels, a Lit Fest debate, poetry slam and a theatre trip! Workshops throughout the week included Olaf Falafel, Manjeet Mann, Breis, Sita Brahmachari, Lamona Ash, Lola Oh, Samuel Heaton, Matt Dickinson, Rapspeare, Kimba, Ali Dickinson, Greg Dickinson and Caleb Femi.

On Wednesday 26th March evening A Level drama students attended a performance of My Neighbor Totoro at the Gillian Lynne Theatre. Students were amazed by the technical elements of the show and couldn’t stop discussing how the create team made each part of the show happen. A stop in the show due to a technical failure was quite the surprise and led to some great discussions on the way home.

On Thursday 27th March our Year 10s enjoyed a literary-based careers panel featuing publishers, journalists and producers from the BBC, Penguin and the Sunday Times. Also on Thursday 27th March students competed in debate on the motion “This house believes that censorship has no place in a free and democratic society.”

The higlight of the week was a visit from Caleb Femi – whose poetry is being added to the AQA GCSE English Literature Anthology – who signed students mock GCSE papers (at the students’ request!). As well as speaking to year 10s throughout the day, he was the special guest judge for our Poetry Slam house competition, alongside Principal Ms Jordan, Director of English Ms Stevens, and last year’s winner Malachi-Levi (8 Williams). The quality of performances for this year’s poetry slam was exceptional – with poems on feminism, autism and war. There were two stand-out performances from Poppy (9 Andrews) and Victoria (9 Kaluuya) which the judges couldn’t seperate, so they were awarded joint winners. Poppy’s poem explored feminism and misogyny with a level of maturity and wisdom beyond her years, and Victoria’s rap on London culture hugely impressed visiting poet Caleb for its complex rhyme and metre. Pankhurst and Franklin each won 5,000 points for the joint first place finish!