We delivered one such youth-led initiative on Saturday 15th August – the Tomorrow Archives. This was a literary time capsule event held at Nottingham Central Library, where participants wrote letters and poems addressed to future Nottingham, its residents, and the year 2050. Anyone of any age and writing level could get involved, decorating their piece once finished and submitting their work into our handmade submission boxes – with the option to perform at our dedicated ‘speakers corner’ as well. For decorating, we provided stickers, wooden stamps, coloured paper and pens – by the end, we had the whole rainbow covered!
The day was a success, with just under 60 people engaging with our event – writing, performing, picking up Big City Reads books, chatting to us about the Youth Advisory Board’s work and so on. Not to forget, the free sweets! For those unfamiliar with creative writing or wanting some inspiration, we designed prompts to guide participants and provide literary springboards. Letter and poem prompts were divided into three categories – ‘fun and casual’, ‘creative and imaginative/visual’, and ‘deep and reflective’. Those who engaged made great use of these – for example, people described in letters how their favourite spot in Nottingham would change by 2050 and did acrostic poems using ‘Robin Hood’ and ‘Nottingham’.
This event was a continuation of the letter-writing theme from our Talking Cities project, which focused on present-day cultural exchange and human connection between young people across the UNESCO creative cities network. Given the heavily digital age we live in, we wanted the Tomorrow Archives to spotlight the lost art of putting pen to paper and spread the joy of creative writing – this time, in a forward-looking way. In this way, both Talking Cities and the Tomorrow Archives cover letter-writing, present and future.
What’s next? The Tomorrow Archives event has a legacy element too – the Youth Advisory Board will now moderate everyone’s submissions before they go into a binder that will be given to the Nottinghamshire county archives and sealed, only to be opened in 2050! Photos taken on the day will also be
included in this ‘time capsule’. There will also be a publicly accessible memory of the event in the archives – this will display photos, the two handmade submission boxes, and a group poem written by members of the Youth Advisory Board. A reel was also created for social media, using candid shots of the event and some words from the YAB Chair, Mia Hagues – this will be put out soon, follow @nottmcityoflit on Instagram and watch this space!