Lit in Colour Teacher Conference 2025

Join us in-person at this year’s Lit in Colour Teacher Conference – a rich opportunity to deepen your subject knowledge and strengthen your practice when teaching texts by authors of colour in Britain. Hosted by Penguin Books, in collaboration with the British Library.

In 2021, the Lit in Colour report published with principal programme partner, The Runnymede Trust, found that just 0.7% of GCSE students in England read a book by a writer of colour. This has since risen to 1.5%, demonstrating that more support is needed to remove the barriers schools and teachers face. As part of an ongoing commitment to create a more diverse and inclusive English curriculum, Lit in Colour’s second bi-annual Teacher Conference will equip primary and secondary educators with new skills, knowledge and inspiration for embedding texts by authors of colour across key stages.

What to expect on the day?

The one-day conference will include:

• A keynote speech from Sathnam Sanghera, bestselling author of Empireland, Empireworld, Stolen History, and his forthcoming title Journeys of Empire
• Workshops designed for primary, secondary and school librarian audiences – on topics including how to handle sensitive language around race in the classroom, and how to use creative writing to inspire students’ own critical and imaginative engagement
• Special access to British Library archive materials that help contextualise novels, plays and poetry
• Displays and giveaways, offering the chance to explore new books, resources and materials to support curriculum planning, inclusive teaching, and assessment readiness
• Catering will be provided, and attendees will receive a free book bundle to support the inclusion of writers of colour in both curriculum and reading for pleasure initiatives.

Full programme to be announced soon.

Places are free but limited – book early to avoid disappointment. Please email discovering.literature@bl.uk if you have any questions. If you can no longer attend after booking, please cancel your ticket so it can be offered to someone on the waiting list.

About Lit in Colour

Since 2021 the Lit in Colour campaign has been supporting UK schools make the teaching and learning of English Literature more inclusive of writers of colour. Penguin Books and Runnymede Trust have collaborated since 2020 with the commissioning of the Lit in Colour: Diversity in Literature in English Schools report published in 2021. This research found that just 0.7% of GCSE students in England read a book by a writer of colour. It also found that primary and secondary school English teachers had little to no training on how to talk about race in the classroom (with only 12% of secondary and 13% of primary survey respondents having received teacher training in this area), or for approaching racist language in books. Other campaign partners include Pearson, OCR, AQA, and Eduqas exam boards, education platform providers Tes and Twinkl, publishers Oxford University Press and Bloomsbury, and The National Literacy Trust and Peters Books.

About the British Library

We are the national library of the UK and we are here for everyone. Our shelves hold over 170 million items – a living collection that gets bigger every day. Although our roots extend back centuries, we aim to collect everything published in the UK today, tomorrow and far into the future. Our trusted experts care for this collection and open it up for everyone to spark new discoveries, ideas and to help people do incredible things.

The British Library Learning team create workshops, tours, events and online resources for teachers and schools, families and learners of all ages. Our digital Inclusive Literature project is producing new, free resources, with a focus on widening the representation of ethnically diverse authors and opening up access to literary archives. Onsite, our free schools programme offers workshops on topics spanning from sacred texts and intricate artists' books to Black British literature and the history of recorded sound.

About Penguin Books UK

• Penguin Books UK is the UK’s largest trade book publisher. It is made up of nine publishing houses and over 40 different imprints; publishing authors including Margaret Atwood, Bernardine Evaristo, Malorie Blackman, Lee Child, Yuval Harari, Nigella Lawson, Charlie Mackesy, Ian McEwan, Nadiya Hussain, Haruki Murakami, Barack and Michelle Obama, Jamie Oliver, Philip Pullman, David Attenborough, Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith and Jacqueline Wilson; along with over 3,000 different Classics.
• Penguin was founded in 1935 by Allen Lane, who wanted to make good quality books affordable and accessible to everyone. In doing so, he created a paperback revolution that democratised literature and transformed publishing.
• @PenguinUKBooks | penguin.co.uk