Following a competitive application process, the National Centre for Writing was awarded support from the Big Give’s match fund: Every £1 becomes £2! Donations of all sizes are welcome, making double the difference for young people.

This is especially important in 2026, the National Year of Reading. Norwich is England’s first UNESCO City of Literature. However, the city and region have among the UK’s worst educational and literacy outcomes.

To help address this, throughout 2026, Newsquest are working with the National Centre for Writing to deliver ‘Born & Read’, a regional campaign to reignite a love of reading in the East of England. The National Centre for Writing’s Big Give campaign furthers this work. If the target is reached, they hope to provide creative sessions for 4,000+ young minds, empowering children and young people with the lifelong benefits of reading and writing for pleasure.

This includes regular hands-on workshops and events for families and young people led by local writers and a county-wide Young Norfolk Writing Prize.

The National Centre for Writing regularly welcomes schools to their historic home, Dragon Hall, for sessions exploring stories of the past and present:

‘Facilitators were thoughtful, kind, curious and supportive. Pitched perfectly to engage and not overwhelm. They were sensitive to the wide range of social and emotional difficulties of the students’, teacher.

About Big Give

Big Give is a registered charity (1136547) that brings together larger donors, like philanthropists, foundations and businesses, with the giving public and the charities that need them. They match what the public gives, and so double the difference the charity can make. It’s an idea that has already raised approximately £427 million for thousands of charities, supported by James Reed CBE, the driving force behind Big Give and Chair of the Trustees.

It’s a simple idea: if someone gives £50, Big Give will match it with £50 from a larger donor who cares about the same cause. Which makes everyone’s donation go much further. Big Give runs the Christmas Challenge, the UK’s biggest match-funded campaign supporting a diverse array of charities working across all charitable sectors within the UK and overseas. In 2025, it raised a record £57.4m, with 1,591 charities and over 152,000 donors participating.

Big Give runs many cause-focused match funding campaigns: The Women & Girls campaign, the Small Charity week campaign, the Arts for Impact campaign, and the Earth Raise campaign. Big Give has supported more than 20,343 charity projects and worked with some of the biggest names in UK philanthropy and charitable grant-making, which provide match funding, including DCMS, John Spiers (founder of Bestinvest and B Corp registered EQ Foundation), Garfield Weston Foundation, The Waterloo Foundation, The Hospital Saturday Fund, The Childhood Trust and many others.