The Youth and Junior Bard competition will return June 2024
The Youth Bard and Junior Bard are very much part of the Stony Stratford Bardic family. These positions were created to inspire young people of Stony Stratford to be creative and to represent their peers at the main community and cultural events throughout the year. Just like the the Big Bard, the role of the Youth Bard is to produce and perform original pieces to celebrate the town and its people, and attend various local events throughout the year.
The Youth and Junior Bard get voted in each year during the StonyLive! Festival, six months after the Big Bard, so that at anyone time we have a Bard, Youth or Big, to support the newly appointed one. The competition invites young people between 8 and 15 years old to present a poem or a story up to 5 minutes long which is considered by a panel of judges and the audience.
The search for the next Youth Bard will begin May 2024. If you are aged between 8 and 16 yrs old, it could be you!
Due to the Covid outbreak in March 2020 we could not hold Youth Bardic Trials in 2020 - 2022 as many events the Youth Bard would normally be involved in were postponed. The 2023 competition was also unavoidably postponed, we are really looking forward to bringing back the Youth and Junior Bards in 2024.
On 2nd June 2019 Eva McAvoy (11yrs) became our 5th Youth Bard, and performed her first appointment a few days later (4th June) at the 'Evening with the Bard and Friends, as part of the StonyLive! festival. She wowed the audience with her story about the Highway Rat visiting Stony Stratford and being befriended by the Bard. Congratulations Eva.
In an unprecedented move we awarded three youth bardic posts in 2018 due to the outstanding quality presented. Megan Willsher became the Youth Bard, Amy Wedderburn is the Junior Bard (Amy's brother Max was our first ever Youth Bard) and Charlie as our Bard-in-waiting. Congratulations to all three of them.
In 2017 two new youngsters impressed judges and the gathered crowd to win the coveted titles. Isabelle Chapman became the Youth Bard, and Dylan Piper became the Junior Bard.
In June 2016 Ethan Sumpter became our new Youth Bard with a creative story, and Lucy Craney won Junior Bard with a poem about Stony Stratford. Both young bards have been busy all year taking many opportunities to perform.
Our very first Youth Bard and Junior Bard was voted for during the StonyLive! festival of 2015, and Max Wedderburn and Morwenna Hills, both aged 9, were voted in for their poetry. Max went on to open the Big Lunch a few days later with his winning poem, and a newly penned poem.