Schools programme
As part of Reading the Land, we are working with children at local schools.
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Lanisha Butterfield is holding half-day workshops at Abbey Primary School and Shaftesbury Primary School, Motcombe Primary School and St. Andrews Primary School at Fontmell Magna on 5 & 6 February. She'll also be reading Flower Block to all the children in these schools. The book is a heart-warming and vibrant ode to nature, community, and the power of planting seeds – both in the soil and in our hearts.
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Louisa Adjoa Parker is leading nature writing workshops at Shaftesbury Secondary School on 11 March. Work begun in these classes will be developed by art and English teachers in the schools and showcased in the school's Summer Arts evening.
Lanisha Butterfield
Lanisha is a lifelong book junkie, whose quiet ambition of becoming an author – long-held and nurtured with lunchtime trips to the local bookshop – were realised during lockdown, with a serendipitous, snap decision to join an online Penguin Children’s Book Workshop.
A woman of Black mixed race heritage, born and raised on a council estate in Oxford, to a hardworking single mother, she is very proud of her working class roots and hopes to challenge misconceptions of council estate life and remind readers – that, no matter where they are from, or what their family might look like, they are just as worthy of fairy-tale and magic, as anyone else.
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Her debut children’s picture book, Flower Block, was published in 2024.
When Jeremiah plants a packet of sunflower seeds, he never expects them to grow overnight, burst through the ceiling, and transform his entire apartment! But as the vines take root, something even more magical happens – his tower block community comes together, connected by the beauty of nature.
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Winner of the 2025 Children’s Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing
Winner of Derby Book Festival's - Derby Children's Picture Book Award 2025
Louisa Adjoa Parker
Louisa has written extensively on ethnically diverse history, and set up the Where are you really from? project. Louisa also works as an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion consultant, and, along with Louise Boston-Mammah, is co-director of The Inclusion Agency. She is a sought-after speaker on rural racism, black history, mental health and marginalisation.
Her fourth poetry collection, a pamphlet entitled She Can Still Sing, was published by Flipped Eye in 2021.
She is currently writing a coastal memoir, to be published by Little Toller Books.
We're grateful for the support of the Swan's Trust and Shaftesbury Charitable Trust, which has enabled us to develop and deliver these events for schools.
