Live Events and Festivals

WayWORD Festival 21^st, 24^th-29^th September 2024

WayWORD 2024 is a youth-led literary cross-arts festival brought to you by the WORD Centre for Creative Writing, featuring Ben Aaronovitch, Leila Aboulela, Amira Al Shanti, Rachelle Atalla, Dean Atta, Sarah Bernstein, Mae Diansangu, Aleksandra Hnatiuk, Danielle Jam, Chris Kohler, Liz Lochhead, James Lovegrove, Elle McNicoll, Grace Nichols, Len Pennie, Noon Salah Eldin, Jacob Sam-La Rose, Jen Stout, Zoe Strachan, Louise Welsh, Maud Woolf, Morna Young and more. WayWORD 2024 Programme

WayWORD Festival 16^th, 19^th-24^th, 30^th September 2023

WayWORD 2023 is a youth-led literary arts festival brought to you by the WORD Centre for Creative Writing, featuring Kathleen Jamie, Nadine Aisha Jassat, Claire Keegan, Sean Wai Keung, Liam McIlvanney, Kathleen Murray, Andrés N. Ordorica, Michael Pedersen, Alycia Pirmohamed, Chitra Ramaswamy, Arun Sood, Alan Spence, May Sumbwanyambe, and more! WayWORD 2023 Programme

WayWORD Festival 20^th-25^th September 2022

WayWORD 2022 is a youth and student-led literary arts festival brought to you by students and staff of the WORD Centre for Creative Writing, featuring Alan Spence, Christopher Brookmyer, Bee Asha Singh, Esther Woolfson, Douglas Stuart, Raymond Antrobus, Sarah Thomas, Monica Ali, Naush Sabah, C.J. Cooke, Padraig Regan, Jenny Colgan, Gareth Williams and Michael Pedersen. Click the link to browse the events and watch recordings of some of the events. WayWORD 2022 Programme

WayWORD Festival 19^th-26^th September 2021

WayWORD 2021 returned in 2021 with a line up featuring Leila Aboulela, Graeme Armstrong, Harry Josephine Giles, Kirstin Innes, A.L. Kennedy, Val McDermid, Zakiya McKenzie, Ely Percy, Karine Polwart, Alan Warner, Irvine Welsh, and Alex Wheatle. Click here to watch recordings of some of our favourite events. WayWORD 2021 Programme

WayWORD Festival 23^th-27^th September 2020

WayWORD was founded in 2020. Our first year line up featured Lemn Sissay, Eimear McBride, Jenni Fagan, Alan Warner and many more...

Selected videos of previous WayWORD events can be viewed here and here. 

WORD at PodFest 2020

While we could not attend live events and festivals this year, we brought the May Festival to you in a series of podcasts to listen to anywhere! Check out the WORD events below!

Episode 2 - In Conversation with Chris Young

Episode 4 - In Conversation with Jane Alexander

Episode 8 - In Conversation with Henry McLeish

WORD BackWORDs

The WORD Centre began in 2014 under the Co-Directorship of Helen Lynch and Wayne Price. The Centre takes its name from the much-loved WORD Literary Festival (1999-2011), under Artistic Director Professor Alan Spence. Featuring established as well as up-and-coming Scottish, Irish and international writers, from Bernard MacLaverty to Ali Smith, from A L Kennedy to Alistair Gray, from Margaret Atwood to Liz Lochhead and Jackie Kay, this annual three-day festival in May grew to be the biggest literary festival of the Northeast, and second in Scotland only to the Edinburgh Book Festival.

The WORD Festival was replaced by the May Festival (2012-2019), show-casing University research, which nonetheless retained a substantial WORD programme of Literature and Arts events organised by the WORD Centre.

WayWORD gave UoA public-facing activity a whole new twist, from its inception in 2019, growing to include musical and artistic performances, Gaelic, Polish, Doric and Arabic events, championing diversity, inclusivity and accessibility alongside its literary focus. Before the pandemic, Centre Director Dr Helen Lynch worked closely with a WORD Centre Intern, colleagues in LLMVC and a group of students from the University of Aberdeen to design a youth/student-led festival to bring together traditional WORD audiences with the concerns of young writers and students.

WORD events have grown and developed to include community enhancement projects, participatory workshops for the public, work with grassroots creatives, and commissions of new work by emerging artists, partnered with established and weel-kent performers. All events are FREE, and the festival pioneered the use of BSL and other accessibility measures throughout.

The first festival took place in September 2020, completely online, and has since evolved as an in-person festival taking place in a transformed campus performance-space, King’s Pavilion, as well as city, shire and community venues. The festival has retained some online and livestreamed events for reasons of accessibility, and its in-person events now number at least 50-60 per year. The tagline ‘celebrating unconventional forms of artistic expression’ enables the festival to embrace diverse representation of performers and artforms, and themed festival days such as Climate & Environment, Mental Health, Race, Languages, Disability and Neurodiversity.

Student Experience and Employability is at the heart of WayWORD: the festival’s innovative structure of Creative Caucus, Youth Committee, and Festival Volunteers, with extensive mentoring from staff and previous students, ensures hands-on experience of all aspects of arts administration and events organisation from programming, artist liaison, finance, and marketing to AV, web-design, facilitating workshops and chairing or co-chairing events themselves. Former committee members have progressed to Assistant Director and Development Officer roles or gone on to work in Arts and Festival curation in Aberdeen, Dundee, Belfast, Edinburgh, and Istanbul.

In recognition of this, The Development Trust Student Experience Fund began funding WayWORD in 2023. The festival’s proactive EDI and Sustainability practices have been recognised by Creative Scotland in its generous funding 2019-2024 and in its recent Multiyear Funding Award 2025-28. Other funders include/have included University of Aberdeen, Chamber Music Scotland, Explorathon/European Researchers Night, The Gaelic Books Council, Aberdeen City Council, Aberdeen Central and Aberdeenshire Libraries, Aberdeen Arts Centre, Aberdeen Art Galleries and Museums, Event Scotland and the British Art Show.