Maggie’s Day 2022 was held on Tuesday 12th July and celebrated over ten years of activities at The Story Museum. Maggie’s Day showcases the collaboration between the Maggie Evans Fund and The Story Museum, to engage school children across Oxfordshire with a love of books and stories and into their Extreme Reading Adventures programme.
The Maggie Evans Fund commemorates the life of Maggie, a literary agent who died at the age of 29. Her parents Bob and Kati and brother David set up the Maggie Evans Fund in her memory. The fund is used to help children discover interests that were Maggie’s own passions: a love and appreciation of stories, poems and illustrations; creative writing of their own; and the exploration of different cultures through languages and translation. As the scope of the fund broadened, it has branched out to further projects, also focused on literacy and culture.
The fund now reaches 16 primary schools in Oxfordshire – Maggie’s Schools – with around 500 students a year taking part. Classes from these schools get to visit The Story Museum and over 200 trips have taken place so far. Extreme Reading Adventures pioneers an approach to reluctant and disadvantaged readers, which turns books into real-life multi-sensory experiences and has been very successful in motivating children. Each school receives three nominations for the programme.
The Maggie’s school children are also invited to attend Maggie’s Day, which usually culminates with an artist performance. This year the event was a little different. Instead of a performance for the children, there was a video presentation of the experience and lessons from Maggie’s Days and Extreme Reading Adventures from over the last decade for the guests and friends of the fund. We also heard from author and illustrator Ted Dewan, who was part of the first ever Maggie’s Day in 2011 and from Neill Cameron, an artist in residence at The Story Museum who supported Maggie’s Day in 2014. The day included a tour around The Story Museum, and its latest exhibition: ‘KA-BOOM! the Art of Creating Comics’, which features Neill Cameron.
Watch the video of the impact of Maggie’s Days and Extreme Reading Adventures here:
The fund is always very grateful for any new donations, of any size, to help preserve Maggie’s literary legacy. If you would like to donate you can do so here.