BBC's 500 Words Competition 2024 - win a literacy Wall Art project!

WIN a literacy Wall Art project with BBC’s 500 Words Competition 2024.

The UK’s largest writing competition encourages children aged 5-11 to submit their original story and stand a chance of winning amazing prizes.

Last year, Promote Your School donated a literacy Wall Art project for the competition. St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School in North London won the project as part of a random prize draw.

This year, we’re once again donating a bespoke, literacy Wall Art project. One lucky UK school will win Wall Art to create a magical space for reading.

BBC’s 500 Words Competition – prizes

Each winner in both age categories will take home a bundle of books. The gold winners in both categories will also win 500 books for their school.

In addition, each winning story will receive an original illustration from some of the best children’s authors in the UK. The winning stories could take home an original illustration from Dapo Adeola, Nigel Parkingson, Lydia Monks, Momoko Abe, Rob Biddulph or Yasmin Ismael. Plus, the six illustrated stories will also be framed and each child will get a 500 Words winners’ book to take home.

There’s also a random prize draw, which takes place at the start of February. One lucky winner will receive a ticket to the final and a bundle of books for themselves and their school. AND they will win a bespoke, literacy Wall Art project from Promote Your School.

The Wall Art project will promote the love of storytelling and will transform up to 30 metres of wall space, anywhere in the school.

What is literacy Wall Art?

Literacy Wall Art is a large, visual mural that aims to inspire reading and fuel literacy.

Promote Your School designs literacy Wall Art for schools around the world. We can feature book names, quotes, plots and images that transport pupils into the magical worlds of stories. We can focus on authors to inspire budding new writers.

From immersive book spine designs to imaginative fairytale lands, we can design almost anything for the walls of your school, nursery, college or university. Many schools ask us to feature the key texts and much-loved favourites in their curriculum within their designs to encourage children to deepen the breadth of their reading, which in turn benefits their writing skills.

For younger readers, we’ll showcase magical creatures and fairytales on the school’s walls. Castles, unicorns, wizards and enchanted woods are all popular choices for young readers and support the development of vocabulary and storytelling skills.

Over our many years working in education, we’ve seen first-hand the life-changing magic that reading offers children of all ages (and adults too!). So we are delighted to support the BBC’s 500 Words Competition once again. We’ll offer one lucky school the chance to win a bespoke literacy Wall Art project.

BBC’s 500 Words – How to enter

The competition opens for entries on 24th September 2024! From this date, children can submit their stories on the BBC’s 500 Words Competition page.

Children should write a story they would love to read themselves. And children can only submit one story each.

There are a few points to remember when entering BBC’s 500 Words Competition;

All stories must be ;

500 words or less
written by an individual and not a group
a child’s own original idea
prose, not rap or poem

Stories must not;

Give any personal details of the child, including their name
Recount an historical event
Be created, written or developed by AI

All stories will be judged on the following criteria;

Characterisation
Plot
Originality
Language
Enjoyment

There are loads of fantastic resources on the BBC’s website. Here you’ll find all the information you need to know about the competition!

Terms and Conditions

We’ll notify the winning author and school once they have been chosen at random
BBC will pass the school’s details to Promote Your School
A member of the Promote Your School will contact the school
They will introduce themselves, explain how the prize works and detail what to expect
From there, they’ll arrange an in-person visit to the school
During this visit, the PYS consultant will measure up the wall space and discuss design options with the school
Once agree, the consultant will guide the school through their design process
Promote Your School offers unlimited amends to the artwork, according to the original brief
Once the school is 100% satisfied, they’ll approve their final artwork
Our installation team will contact the school to arrange a pre-installation survey
Now for the exciting part! We’ll install your Wall Art
Pupils, parents and staff will enjoy the new, visual Wall Art for many years to come!
The competition is open for entries from Tuesday 24 September – Friday 8 November at 9pm.