July 2026 Newsletter
Hello Little Green Pig friends, families and followers!
The school holidays are here and in this bumper summer edition, we're celebrating all the amazing work created by our children and young people and the projects that have inspired them this term.
From exploring allotments and tasting new foods, to cliff top adventures and sea shanties, a museum visit and our new puppet film, it's been an exciting time at Little Green Pig's after school clubs from Eastbourne to Worthing.
There's also been brilliant events for young people, including our Amplified project in Eastbourne and our Young Writers Collective in-person workshop in Brighton. Make yourself a cool drink and have a read!
Scroll on to discover our latest stories and how you can get involved in supporting our next chapters too...
Could you be a Big Give Pledger?
Support our young writers as a Big Give Pledger
We have exciting news and a small request. We know it's the middle of summer but we're looking ahead to something we need your help with this winter.
This festive season Little Green Pig will be running our most critical Christmas campaign yet. Together we raised £8,000 last Christmas - our most successful campaign ever! This year we’re aiming to raise a further £6,000 in unrestricted funding to keep supporting children and young people. But we can't do this without you.
There is a very strong chance we will secure match funding from the Big Give - meaning for every £1 someone donates £2 will go straight to Little Green Pig and double the support we can give to our young writers!
But to be eligible, we need to secure £1,500 in pledges by 28 August.
We are looking for up to 10 generous individuals who can help us by pledging £150 or more.
By becoming a Pledger you will:
Help unlock match funding that could double every donation to Little Green Pig.
Encourage even more people to get behind our Christmas campaign.
Be part of a small group of Little Green Pig friends who are deeply committed to supporting children and young people.
If you'd like to pledge or find our more, get in touch with our Director Nicky on nicky@littlegreenpig.org.uk
Pledges won't be collected until after the campaign concludes in December, but we do need to secure all pledges before the 28 August deadline.
Thank you so much for supporting Little Green Pig and our young writers!
OUR LATEST LEARNING PROGRAMME UPDATES
Tales of adventurous tomatoes, pizza poetry and favourite family recipes are amongst the feast of words and creativity to be found in our latest publication! Our three Brighton and Hove writing clubs were united in the exploration of food, feasting and growing this summer. Inspired by visits to local allotments and sensory tasting sessions with Kindly, this bumper book is jam-packed with imaginative poetry, stories and recipes plus colourful collages created with artist Lizzie Lomax. Families, funders and partners celebrated the launch of Word Feast at summer events with performed readings and yummy snacks! You can explore the publication online here.
A POCKETFUL OF STORIES AND A NEW PUPPET FILM
At Worthing club we’ve had fun exploring the role of clothing in stories and other forms of writing. Children visited the historic costume collection at Worthing Museum where they were inspired by the incredible pieces on display. They then became costume designers in a workshop with theatre designer Lucy Bradridge, having great fun collaging incredible outfits. Their work is on display in the Learning Space at Worthing Museum for visitors to enjoy!
We're also excited to share our new puppet film created at Worthing Club with artist Darren East. The children made puppets, wrote their dialogue and filmed them in action with Darren. We gathered children and their families to share the film in June and you can watch it here.
THE POSTMASTER PROJECT
This summer, children from our Brighton and Hove clubs exchanged parcels and poems with children from Story Factory clubs in Sydney! Learning through creative writing about each other’s clubs, cultures and commonalities. The Australia exchange project featured a set of “tasks” set by a mysterious intergalactic character called The Postmaster. Children sent each other parcels and completed tasks from photo mapping their local area, to tasting TimTams, sharing profiles about themselves, and writing postcard poems about local landmarks. This international partner project came about after both organisation's teams met at the International Youth Writing centre conference in Stockholm last summer. Some videos and more about this project can be found here.
STORMY SEAS AND SAFE HAVENS
Eastbourne club have had an exciting term exploring the history and stories of the local coastline with visits to National Trust’s Birling Gap and Eastbourne RNLI Museum. The children gathered inspiration for their very own sea shanty which they created with club leader Emma Joy Edwards and visiting artist Joe Fleming, who provided musical accompaniment and recorded, mixed and produced their brilliant song - listen to it, and sing along here!
SIGN UP FOR AFTER SCHOOL CLUBS
We have spaces available at our After School Clubs for the new term in September. The termly clubs run in Worthing, Eastbourne and at Whitehawk Library on Mondays and Moulsecoomb Primary School on Tuesdays. We have a waiting list for our club at Brackenbury Primary on Thursdays. More info on each club and how to sign up is here.
YOUNG WRITERS COLLECTIVE
Amplified Eastbourne is one of our flagship Young Writer’s Collective projects for 13-18 year olds and took place across April and May in partnership with youth music charity AudioActive. Young people worked with poet and writer Roy McFarlane and singer songwriter Cate Ferris to write original poems, stories and songs which they performed for a live audience at the Birley Centre at the end of the project. The whole team were so inspired by the talent, courage and presence of the young participants and so too were the audience who commented 'Nothing short of amazing' and 'So blown away by the quality of the young people's writing!'.
Congratulations to all of the participants involved and we’re really pleased to now share the film of the project which you can watch here.
Since we launched our Young Writers Collective platform last summer we have welcomed 45 new members! It’s been wonderful to read their brilliant submissions for the two anthologies they’ve published so far, and to help make their ideas for the direction of YWC a reality!
It was really exciting to be able to bring some of them together at an in-person creative writing workshop at Brighton Youth Centre in July. As chosen by YWC members, the theme for the workshop was ‘Who Am I?’ - an opportunity to try different prompts and exercises to explore themes of identity, character and finding voice - either the personal voice of the writer or the voice of characters within a story.
Award-winning playwright and poet Roy McFarlane planned and led the workshop in collaboration with two members of the Young Writers Collective - Grace and Lyra - who joined the team as Workshop Assistants, in a new paid opportunity for YWC members to develop their leadership skills. The informal open-mic at the end of the workshop was an incredible showcase for their talents. Some of the pieces created during the session will feature in our next Young Writers Collective anthology, so look out for that publication on www.youngwriterscollective.org later on this month!
Young Writers Collective is free to join for any young person aged 11-18 who lives/works or goes to school in Sussex. So if you or someone you know would like to come along to our next workshop, or submit writing for our next publication, you can find out more information and sign up here.
TEAM UPDATES
OUR NEW EVALUATION AND COMMUNICATIONS INTERN
"I joined Little Green Pig as an intern at the beginning of June and will be here until the end of August. From day one, I’ve felt incredibly welcomed by the team, and settling into the role has been such a great experience. I’ve loved getting to know everyone, visiting the afterschool writing clubs, meeting the children, and seeing first-hand the creativity and enthusiasm that make Little Green Pig such a special place.
One of the things I’ve enjoyed most is learning about everything that happens behind the scenes. It’s been eye-opening to see the amount of hard work, care, and dedication that goes into running programmes like these and creating meaningful opportunities for young people.
This role is already giving me valuable insight into the world of children’s arts charities, a sector I’ve wanted to work in for a long time, and I’m learning something new every day. I’m looking forward to contributing my own ideas over the coming months and seeing them come to life as part of the Little Green Pig team."
CONGRATULATIONS TO PATRICE!
Huge congratulations to Little Green Pig Ambassador and award-winning children’s author Patrice Lawrence, on being selected as the new Waterstones Children’s Laureate 2026-2028. Our Director Nicky was at the ceremony held at the Barbican Centre on July 7th when the closely guarded secret was revealed by Frank Cottrell-Boyce, as he ended his laureateship and welcomed Patrice into her new role.
Patrice shared her vision for the next two years, promising to champion story sharing and reading to help build communities. “Reading helps us to understand each other’s stories – we are changed by stories and they connect us to each other”, she added that she wanted to build an evidence base showing the benefits of shared reading and to celebrate the unsung heroes who nurture readers. Patrice was born in Brighton, and grew up in Sussex, and as a child she longed to see children that looked like her in books. She has published 16 books from picture books to young adult novels and was awarded an MBE for services to literature in 2021. We can’t wait to see what this next chapter holds for her.
SUNNY SUMMER FUN!
The sun was shining as representatives from across the Little Green Pig team gathered at Sea Lanes for our July Summer Social. We invited our staff, trustees, volunteer mentors, and Youth Board together to celebrate their hard work. This was our excuse to throw a party and say a massive thank you to the wonderful people who keep LGP running, enabling children and young people across Sussex to have their voices heard. There was food, cold drinks, tunes and games, with guests attending from Eastbourne to Iraq! It was absolutely brilliant to welcome back Bara’a, one of our founding Youth Board members and to hear all about her adventures.
VOLUNTEERS WEEK
In June we celebrated Volunteers Week. We are so lucky to have an incredible team of volunteer Story Mentors and Illustrator Mentors who generously share their passion and talents at our clubs and workshops. They are at the heart of our mission, supporting the children and young people with empathy and positivity, and embracing that all-important sense of fun that inspires young imaginations to soar!
Throughout the year they share insightful, moving and sometimes hilarious feedback about how the children are growing and thriving week by week. Please enjoy a selection of these Magic Moments to celebrate the amazing contribution of our volunteers.
“When the children got up and read their poems about identity it was beautiful, they had such depth and such innocence and it all came from the feelings they have had in life so far. It showed the impact their family and surroundings have had on how they see themselves. Truly moving.” - Francesca
“A child wrote about a Giant Woodlouse as the Sydney Opera House, very inspired!” - Freddie
“Leona was busy making sculptures out of aluminium foil, so I thought she wasn't going to say anything when everyone shared. But it turned out she was thinking as she sculpted. She came up with an amazing idea and shared it in the circle anyway. This multitasking was really impressive to me, it felt like double creativity!” - Tia
Read more mentor Magic Moments here.
You can learn more about volunteering with Little Green Pig here.
A big thank you to our funders and supporters including our regular Fiver Club givers, Gemini Foundation, Arts Council England, Brighton & Hove Community Catalyst Fund, Leathersellers' Foundation, John Laing Charitable Trust, Chalk Cliff Trust, Enjoolata Foundation, Hedley Foundation, JJ Charitable Trust, Sussex Community Foundation, Focus Foundation and our Big Give pledgers, donors and Champion: AKO Foundation. We really couldn't do any of this without you! You can find out ways to support our work here.