I’ve just spent a week volunteering for the Birmingham Book Festival 2012. I signed up in early summer, not really knowing what to expect and I turned up on Monday night to the Bay Leaf Cafe in the Custard Factory, Birmingham to lend a hand with ‘The New Lybia’ Its writers and bloggers.
It’s been a while since I went down to the Custard Factory, the last time was an all-nighter featuring 2Many Dj’s so that has got to be at least five years ago. Nowadays I am well past going to all-nighters so it felt pretty cool being there in what seems to be a kind of village for art, vintage shops and the more creative types in Birmingham.
My involvement wasn’t too strenuous – I stood at the doorway of the function area of the restaurant and greeted people and looked at their tickets – and I took photos. Three Lybian writers spoke about their work and read some excerpts of their stories, which have all been included in Banipal 40, a literary magazine. All three were inspirational – Giuma Bukleb having spent ten years in prison for simply being a writer under Gaddafi’s regime, Mohamed Mesratie being very young and Ghazi Gheblawi for not only being a surgeon but also having time to blog and write short stories.
Later in the week I again acted as a door person for the ‘address from the pulpit’ by Jackie Kay in Birmingham Cathedral. In beautiful surroundings Jackie read from her short stories and told us about her life in a sweet and entertaining way often giggling at the very funny events that have happened to her.
Finally I helped prepare the room for an evening of European Literature at the Ikon Gallery featuring writers from Hungary, Bulgaria and Sweden.
In return for donating about 15 hours of my time I was able to hear writers from across the world speak about their work, listen to some new stories I hadn’t heard before and visit some of the venues in Birmingham that I have walked past so often and never ventured inside. I also got free tickets to see Caitlin Moran and Stuart Maconie put the world to rights on socialism, feminism and music in the new world.
It was an inspiring week, giving me lots of ideas for new books to read and time to think about how and why writers find inspiration. It felt good to be helping a festival take place which has been going for 14 years in Birmingham and seems to be growing all the time. The hardest part was trying not to buy a book at every single event I attended!
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