We’re excited to announce we are taking part in the Big Give Christmas Challenge this year to raise £10,000 in just 1 week!

All donations made during the campaign week, from 2 –  9 December, will be doubled. The funds raised will be used to help make Lewisham the UK’s first Borough of Literature.

Thank you to our generous champion funder the Reed Educational Trust Limited, who will match every donation made to help us reach our target.

What are we fundraising for?

Through the Big Give Christmas Challenge, we hope to raise £10,000. Every penny of that money will go towards making Lewisham the UK’s first Borough of Literature.

We will use the funds raised to run creative writing workshops, career development opportunities for writers, community storytelling events and generate an archive of local stories. By raising the money to run these activities, we will be able to test and shape, in conversation with the community, our concept for the first ever Borough of Literature.

Why is this important?

This campaign is important because 31% of Lewisham’s children leave primary school unable to write at national levels. There’s a north-south divide in cultural activities and many people face barriers to taking part. Without active initiatives, literature remains out of reach for many of our communities. And the rich mix of Lewisham’s 75 nationalities are rarely represented in publishing or storytelling. Our research found that publishers worry that books by writers of colour “won’t appeal” to audiences, so diverse stories often go untold. This is not good enough. Lewisham deserves better. You deserve better.

How does this build towards making Lewisham the UK’s first Borough of Literature?

Our plan is that by Autumn 2026, thanks to your donations, we will have mapped the impact of these activities and know even better what our community needs and wants. We’ll be able to submit a funding bid to expand our Borough of Literature activity across the borough, creating a model that one day will be copied by other London boroughs and who knows, maybe even other cities!

“Growing up in Lewisham, and still being here, it’s a place with this real plethora of cultures, people and stories as well. It would be great for people to have the space to tell their stories, for it to not feel it’s tied directly to literature or the written word, but just storytelling in general.”

– Caleb Azumah Nelson, Award-winning author, Lewisham resident

How can you get involved?

Before the campaign week, we are collecting pledges. If you are able to make a donation of any size towards our £10,ooo goal, it’ll be doubled and make double the difference.

Please consider pledging your support.

At the start of the campaign week, on 2 December, we will reach out to everyone who has made a pledge with instructions on how to donate. All donations will be made via our Big Give campaign page and must be made during the campaign week from Tuesday 2 December to Tuesday 9 December.