BOOK
a IN A DAY a
On Saturday September 20, 2014, Ossett Observer Presents in partnership with Wakefield Lit Fest set out to capture the
voices, wishes and aspirations of the people of the town. 2014 marks the 150th Anniversary of the founding of the original Ossett Observer newspaper by the Beckett Brothers. In celebration of that anniversary we wanted to have a look at the town now, who lives here and what stories they have to tell. We invited writer and broadcaster Ian Clayton to help us to create the book; he came to Ossett for a day and spoke to people in the library, in the market place and at the Festival In A Day event being held at Trinity Church. We invited all 9 of Ossett’s Junior and Infant schools to take part in creating a community poem for Ossett called ‘Our Ossett’, which was performed in public for the first time at Festival In A Day. We captured people’s ideas and slogans for a Happy Life in our ‘Sloganism project’ where participants had the chance to try out traditional printing methods with Nick Loaring of The Print Project. We invited people to write wishes for Ossett on our tree of pigeon wishes and we invited people to bring their memories of the original Ossett Observer to share in our Pop Up People’s History Museum. These are their stories.
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