Ilkley Literature Festival 2022

We were proud to support Ilkley Literature Festival once more, helping to promote their October festival.

Stars of the screen, poets, politicians, actors and adventurers all headed to West Yorkshire for a packed programme of events at the north’s leading literary festival.

Ardal O’Hanlan interviewed by Nick Ahad

Headline acts included Ruth Jones, Adrian Chiles, Malorie Blackman, Ardal O’Hanlan, Gabby Logan and Ian McMillan.

We set up a number of author interviews with the Yorkshire Post, including profiles of Melvyn Bragg, Lord Chris Patten, and a feature on its new anthology marking 10 years of the festival’s Young Writers’ Group.

The Yorkshire Post also did a fantastic profile championing the festival’s impact on Yorkshire, with a bespoke feature, and we also placed comment from festival director, Erica Morris.

Ann at Cause UK got to put her feature writing skills to work, interviewing Adrian Chiles and Malorie Blackman for the Yorkshire Post, and Rosemary Shrager for the Telegraph and Argus.

We also helped set up a number of author interviews on BBC Radio Leeds, including the unofficial poet laureate of Twitter, Brian Bilston, the Bard of Barnsley Ian McMillan, and interviews with authors including Adrian Chiles; media monitoring showed over 20 meaningful clips of presenter chat and interviews.

The Express ran a bespoke interview with Ruth Jones to promote her appearance in Ilkley, and the Guardian gave a plug for Adrian Chiles’s appearance in his column. A number of magazines profiled the festival. Yorkshire Living did a feature on its theme ‘Explore Moor’, Yorkshire Life interviewed Gaby Logan, and Beyond magazine and the Big Issue North did a general round up.

Running for almost half a century, the festival has a long history with poets, and provides a platform for emerging, new poets, who are often stars of the future.

Ted Hughes, Carol Ann Duffy and Maya Angelou have appeared at the festival over the years, and the first festival in 1973 was inaugurated by WH Auden.

Our media analytics (Cision) showed there were over 200 press articles on the festival during our three-month PR campaign, with a potential audience of 148.14M.