We were all equally thrilled and humbled by the level of engagement and response to our Youth Writing competition this year. With over 130 entries submitted (both from individuals and home-educators as and also teachers sending in class responses from several young writers) it was heartening to see such a range of writing from across our local counties. One thing was clear – our young people care very much about ‘Hope’ – the importance of it, and the need to nurture it.

Our judges (all writers too) Carys Jones, Nigel Jarrett, Sarah KilBride and Paul Manship gave their time freely and generously to consider each entry. No mean feat! And we would like to thank them for their willingness to take on this creative challenge. We were fortunate – we were able to complete the competition just as we went into the March lockdown and we were able to announce prizewinning entrants of their success in April.

While we aren’t able to offer an in-person celebratory presentation as we did in 2019, we will be running a live Zoom event to do just that, on Saturday 7th November which will also be supported by our Abergavenny Town Mayor, Councillor Tony Konieczny and Phillip Christie of Christie Residential.