At this year's Bingley Festival, Kate joined Bradford Community Radio to talk about The Adventures of Bradford, a growing movement helping children across the city discover they have stories worth telling.

She started, as she always does, at the beginning.

Last summer, after finishing a bedtime read of Treasure Island, Kate turned to Gabriel and asked: "Shall we make up a story where you're the hero?" He said yes immediately. He wanted to defeat sea monsters. He wanted a sidekick, not just any sidekick, a platypus. Kate took notes as he narrated. No grammar corrections. No spellings checked. Just a mother writing down exactly what her son imagined.

Over time, that became The Adventures of Gabriel, an international bestseller. But more than that, it became proof of something: children do not need a classroom, a worksheet, or a writing frame to produce extraordinary stories. They need someone willing to listen and write it down.

Through school workshops across Bradford, children in Years 5 and 6 are now creating their own hero stories using the same method. One child speaks. Their partner scripts. The stories that come out are, as Kate told the radio audience, "gloriously unfiltered." Dragons. Underwater cities. Time-travelling missions. Children saving the world with a specificity and confidence that surprises every adult in the room.

Bradford has a deep tradition of oral storytelling. Kate spoke on air about hearing her grandfather's stories in his Yorkshire accent, stories she never read but remembers completely. That is the power of a story told in a voice that belongs to someone you love. It stays.

The kitchen table is where this starts. Not a school workshop, not a publisher, not a curriculum. A table, a child with something to say, and an adult prepared to write it down without correcting a word.

Kate's advice to every parent listening was simple: ask your child to tell you a story tonight. Be their scribe. Do not worry about grammar or spelling. Just let the imagination come out. You will be surprised by what is already there, waiting to be heard.

"Take away the worry. Don't stress about punctuation. Just tell the story." — Kate Markland