Come and find your happy place! That’s the open invitation from Bath Children’s Literature Festival and The Egg Theatre who have teamed up to open Bath’s official Happiness Hub.
For two days this September, children and young people are invited to drop into The Egg Theatre and take part in creative and thoughtful activities that will help enhance a sense of wellbeing. There will be tips and tricks about how to keep your head healthy and on the sunny side.
The Happiness Hub will be open to all from 10am to 4pm on Saturday 24 and Sunday 25 September as part of Bath Children’s Literature Festival, which is Europe’s largest stand-alone children’s book festival.
Here are some of the highlights:
- Write down what’s worrying you or making you anxious and drop it into the worry jar to offload your cares
- Relax and chill out. Take your time in the reading corner where there’ll be a collection of books from the authors visiting the festival along with some past favourites.
- Think about what happiness tastes like as you tuck into a Happy ice cream, created especially for the festival by The Yolk, The Egg’s café team.
- Celebrate our natural world and learn more about how you can care for the planet.
- Relax under the stars in an area dedicated to outer space and filled with sensory delights.
- Meet members of Off The Record, the charity which works to improve the emotional health and wellbeing of young people in Bath & North East Somerset. Pick up contact details on how to access its services, which include counselling, listening support and participatory youth groups. Our bookseller Mr B’s is also delighted to support Off the Record Bath and North East Somerset (OTR) as its charity of the year for 2022. You can make donations to OTR directly through Mr B’s at The Egg over the weekend.
- Plus, there’ll be opportunities to make and create, dance your worries away and explore what makes YOU happy!
The Happiness Hub weekend will also include ticketed events, including a session with mental health ambassador Dr Alex George chatting to TV and radio personality and fellow mental health advocate Katie Thistleton, about his manual A Better Day, with creative sessions inspired to bring joy and silliness (Saturday 24September, 11am). There will also be a brilliant BIG draw off, What Makes You Happy? at The Egg with illustrators Steven Lenton and Rikin Parekh (Saturday 24 September, 2pm).
Picture book writer Tessa Yates of The Happy Book Company will be hosting an event, inspired by the adventures of Geoffrey Finds a Bike: a story about togetherness where a gleesome threesome of cycling giraffes will show us how to live our best lives, even when everything goes wrong (Sunday 25September 11am).
To finish off the weekend, there will be a session with author and performer Gareth P Jones where you can expect live music, a yeti detective, fast-rapping, interactive storytelling, anarchic humour, unexpected plot twists and the odd zombie or two (Sunday 25 September, 3pm)!
The Happiness Hub is supported by Bath Spa University.
Tickets are on sale at bathfestivals.org.uk or tel: 01225 463362 or at The Egg on 01225 823409 www.theatreroyal.org.uk