Festivals: Literary Legacy

What the Dickens? Bringing A Christmas Carol to Yorkshire with broadcaster, Selina Scott.

Case Study

A rare book up for auction. A race against time to raise funds. And so our story began…

The motive: to bring Dickens back to Malton and use his literary legacy to reinvigorate the market town of Malton.

In 2012/3, Cause UK led the campaign to raise $35k in just three weeks to secure a signed edition of Dicken’s A Christmas Carol for Malton. It was an epic undertaking, collating letters of support, persuading the vendor and seller to sell the book below its reserve price, and co-ordinating the fundraising effort.

Just in time for Christmas – the book was secured!

Cause UK issued a press release and carefully timed media call at Castle Howard the day the Telegraph newspaper ran an agreed exclusive with celebrity patron, Selina Scott.

The response was phenomenal with the story featuring on that evening’s national ITN News, followed by a feature on BBC Breakfast.

In the press it hit the front page of the Yorkshire Post, and was covered widely in the York Press, Northern Echo, Malton Gazette, Dalesman magazine, BBC Online, The Independent and was even picked up as far afield as Iran (?!) and America.

Local news channels Calendar News and Look North ran simultaneous stories on the same night.

The estimated media coverage was in excess of half a million pounds, with an audience of 7 million plus.

The following year, we brought Songs of Praise to Malton to record a special show featuring Selina Scott and James Martin.

Film crews spent the day in the town visiting key locations linked to one of Dickens’ most well-loved books – broadcast on 7 December, 2014.

This year we are building on Malton’s links with Dickens by launching a Malton Dickensian festival with Miriam Margolyes, please go to www.maltondickensianfestivel.com for more details.