I was in Antwerp for the week to attend the University of Antwerp Summer School course in Children’s Literature, in the Ecology stream. It was part of the scholarship and was a really amazing week. If you’re interested in literature for young people and you happen to be in Belgium at the right time, take the opportunity and go along. It’s primarily a course for academics, but there are also a lot of people who are involved in lit in other ways – teachers, librarians, booksellers, all passionate and interested.
Because I was embracing student life, I’d arranged to stay in one of the new student accommodation buildings near the university. It was great to be only a block and a half away from the main building, but the accommodation information was a little bare in terms of how… bare the rooms would be. I’d come to terms with the loft bed and climbing up the shelves every night (hint: use a chair to get you up the first couple of shelves) and dutifully brought a towel with me, but I hadn’t paid much attention to the fine print saying the furniture would be different to the images. The images all included a comfy looking easy chair and other sundries, but the reality only included the combo loft bed/desk/shelf and a plastic chair. Not even loo paper!
After a trip to the Carrefour Express for necessities, I was in more of a position to appreciate the accommodation. The view was entirely worth the bare concrete!
During the week we started each day with a plenary session with the whole cohort, before breaking up into four streams. I was in the Literature and Ecology stream, looking at how literature for young people represents and interacts with the environment, the petrochemical industry and sustainability. Great fun and lots of difficult discussions. Each night I went back to my accommodation (which I quickly realised also had no aircon, as the building was passive solar… which is great except for heatwaves) and did readings for the next day. So much brain work!
As well as meeting many fabulous people from around Europe (and a couple from further afield), I linked up with two women from the Netherlands who were at the course, A and S. We had dinner after the course each night, and were the core of Team Leopardprint on the quiz night on Thursday. After a brave start, we came resoundingly last.
As part of the course we went on a couple of visits – on Tuesday to a variety of bookshops to consider how childhood is commodified (although really to browse), and on Thursday to visit the Antwerp Heritage Library. I even saw a 1698 copy of Perrault’s fairy tales! I gasped audibly when it was shown to us.
I also did a bit of sightseeing around Antwerp, popping into DIVA, the diamonds, jewellery, silver and goldsmithing museum to have a browse of the sparkles and shiny things, before belatedly realising there was a lecture in 13 mins and the museum was 17 mins walk from the university!
A allowed herself to be dragged along to visit the fashion museum with me on Saturday, both of our final day in Antwerp, and we stopped into a board game cafe to try out some games. Great setup – you pay E5 to play the games, and then they sell you drinks, and they have a limited menu of sandwiches and nachos to eat. Lots of fun!
I had time to kill on my way to the train station, so I stopped and had early lunch at Ellis Burgers, a place a bit like Grill’d with gourmet burgers and GF buns available. A delicious farewell to Antwerp – a lovely city and I’d love to visit again.
Two Weeks Away 
Absolutely thrilled that it was worthwhile and that you had some time to check out other things