Phillips Idowu celebrates after winning the triple jump gold medal at the European Championships in Barcelona. Photograph: Ian Walton/Getty Images

This article was written by Anna Kessel in Barcelona, for guardian.co.uk on Thursday 29th July 2010 21.49 Europe/London

Phillips Idowu, whoever doubted you were the man to win European gold? All season long the spotlight had been on Teddy Tamgho, France’s 21-year-old triple jump sensation and the new world indoor record holder who pulled off the third longest jump in history when he leapt to 17.98m in New York last month. But last night in Barcelona it was the old master – 10 years Tamgho’s senior – who gave the new kid a lesson in composure and execution.

“It’s a great feeling,” said Idowu who led the competition from start to finish. “It wasn’t easy. It’s been a difficult year and I’m so grateful I came out on top. I’ve worked so hard. My build-up to the championships was not great but I am very happy to have been able to jump consistently today. I’ve suffered a lot of defeats and I’m sure the media thought I didn’t have it in me. But I had to take the knocks and be strong minded.”

Idowu always said he would be “ready to go” when his hair turned red. In Barcelona with a bright red barnet, he let loose a huge personal best in the fourth round of 17.81m – adding 8cm to the distance that won him the world title in Berlin last year. “I knew I had to [jump a PB],” he said. “I knew back in March [at the world indoors] the way Teddy was jumping it would need a big jump to win.”

Alongside him Tamgho, who had achieved so much this year, laboured in frustration. Suddenly the confidence of the youngster, who had announced to Jonathan Edwards that he would break his 15-year-old world record, seemed to elude him.

Last night a fifth-round jump of 17.45m was the best he could manage, giving him the bronze medal, while Marian Oprea of Romania took silver in 17.51m. Disconsolate, Tamgho sank to the track and covered his face.

Idowu declined his final jump of the competition, instead taking a few moments to allow the victory to sink in. His first European medal outdoors, Idowu had never finished higher than fifth place in this competition before. Slowly the smile came and soon he was reeling around the track, flag in hand, finger wagging.

It must have taken huge mental strength not to be swayed by Tamgho’s seemingly insurmountable achievements this year. But back in his adopted home of Birmingham Idowu had refused to panic. A season’s best jump of 17.48m going into the championships seemed meagre, but he promised he would be on his game in time for the final. He was true to his word.

The Hackney boy once known as the erratic and disorderly young pretender to Edwards’ triple jump throne is no more. Having won a major title every year for the past five years – Commonwealth champion, European indoor champion, world indoor champion, world outdoor champion – the father of two has finally mastered consistency.

The only accolades to elude him now are an Olympic title – following the bitter disappointment of a silver medal in 2008 – and the world record. “There’s one more medal in my career I need to win,” said Idowu, “and that’s in 2012.”

In the men’s high jump Martyn Bernard won bronze. The 25-year-old who missed the world championships last year after an ankle operation – and then fled to Ibiza to party – has been brought to heel by the head coach, Charles van Commenee, who threatened to cut off his funding unless he relocated from Liverpool to UK Athletics’ centre of excellence in Lee Valley. Bernard duly obeyed and has reaped the benefits. “Did I mind?” he asked, referring to Van Commenee’s tough stance. “No, not at all. He’s a direct guy and I like that. Less than a year later I’ve got a medal and I’ll improve from that next year.”

Bernard, the Commonwealth silver and European indoor bronze medallist, cleared a season’s best of 2.29m at his first attempt, beating Sweden’s Linus Thornblad into fourth place on countback. Aleksandr Shustov took gold and Ivan Ukhov – a YouTube sensation after his drunken performances two years ago – won silver.

Elsewhere in the competition the British team prospered with a raft of strong semi-final performances to set up the prospect of more championship medals this weekend.

Mo Farah, looked in confident form winning his 5,000m heat. He will be joined in Saturday’s final by Chris Thompson, the man who followed Farah home in the 10,000m. Michael Rimmer was the fastest man through to the 800m final, while training partners Dai Greene and Rhys Williams won their 400m hurdles semi-finals. Marlon Devonish and Christian Malcolm qualified for the 200m final.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Trouble in the football stand: police now use the concept of joint enterprise to prosecute everyone involved in a crime. Photograph: Mick Walker/Action Images

This article was written by Diane Abbott, for guardian.co.uk on Thursday 29th July 2010 07.59 Europe/London

The centuries-old legal doctrine of “joint enterprise” has been taken up with enthusiasm by modern policemen and prosecutors. It provides one remedy for the increasingly intractable problem of how you prosecute urban gangs. However, its increased use also raises very real issues of fairness, as has been voiced by campaigners for reform, who were disappointed this week when permission to appeal was dismissed in the controversial case of Jordan Cunliffe , a partially blind teenager convicted of murder because he was present at the attack and did nothing to prevent it.

The concept of joint enterprise is not new. In the eighteenth century, if someone was killed as the result of a duel, the concept gave the authorities far-reaching powers to prosecute. They could convict not just the men taking part in the duel but also their supporters, those holding their coats and even doctors standing ready to attend to the wounded.

The most famous modern use of joint enterprise was in convicting Derek Bentley of shooting a police officer in 1952. The actual murder was committed by his accomplice, Christopher Craig. But, because Craig was only 16 at the time, he escaped hanging. Bentley was heard to utter the words “Let him have it”, so he was convicted of murder under the principle of joint enterprise and hanged in 1953.

But the police appear to have stepped up the use of the doctrine in recent years to deal with the specific problem of urban gangs. Gangs are a big issue in the inner city. And this goes beyond the tabloid headlines. People feel menaced by them. Many of the most unpleasant phenomena of modern youth culture take place in gangs, notably gang rape.

In a gang, an under-educated young man finds friendship, family, possibilities for entrepreneurial activity and the bravado to commit horrific acts. Gangs are bad for the communities that they flourish in and bad for the young men involved. In certain communities, young men trying to keep their head down and pass their exams often find themselves on the fringes of criminal gangs because to do otherwise is to risk social ostracism.

But prosecuting gangs has proved an increasingly intractable task for the authorities. The gulf in culture, class and race between many gangs in modern urban Britain and the authorities trying to bring them to book makes it harder than ever to expect a penitent gang member to “crack” and tell the police all they know. On the contrary, I have had a number of instances in my own constituency where a whole gang sees someone murdered or raped, but nobody will admit to seeing anything.

This is where the joint enterprise concept starts to look attractive. The authorities are going out of their way to let young people know of its existence. In a police video presentation for young people, the policeman says: “If you are involved in a murder in any way, shape or form we will come to you. We will find you. We will come at a time when you don’t expect us and we will enter your life. We will invade your home. Invariably your front door will be removed. We will enter. This will be in front of your parents and your family, possibly your friends, and we will change your life.”

But, increasingly, concerns are being expressed about the use of joint enterprise against gang activity and whether it is fair. The (then) Lord Chief Justice Lord Philips set out his reservations in his Essex University/Clifford Chance lecture on reforming the law of homicide in 2008. The Law Commission has echoed these doubts.

As a strong supporter of civil liberties, but also as someone who has first-hand experience of the problems posed by gang culture in urban Britain, I can see both sides of the argument on the use of “joint enterprise”. There can be no doubt that the law warrants review.

Diane Abbott is MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Brain Boxes & Boundless Books is an exhibition of recycled book art, montage and paper sculpture. All created by patients from Homerton University Hospital. Photograph: Antonio Olmos

This article was written by Kate Kellaway, for guardian.co.uk on Sunday 25th July 2010 00.06 Europe/London

If you were to stumble on Brainboxes and Boundless Books at Hackney Museum in east London, the first thing that would strike you is the affinity between the artworks on display. For this dazzling, small-scale exhibition is the visual equivalent of a conversation. It has been curated by artist Shaun Caton, who runs art workshops for long-stay patients at Homerton hospital’s neurological rehabilitation unit. It at one and the same time explores brain damage and seeks to transcend it. You will find almost no information about the artists themselves (patient confidentiality) – and the sense is that the art has come out of nowhere. In describing the challenges his artists were battling against, Caton lists a range of neurological conditions: Guillain-Barré syndrome, Parkinson’s, strokes, brain trauma suffered in road accidents.

The show includes intimate and moving portraits as well as other ways of representing the self. Many patients have opted for making boxes which are potent metaphors for memory – receptacles filled with jewels, coral, birds, babies, a leaping dolphin. There are recycled books here too – decorated with haunting phrases (I loved the “how much longer envelope”). As I looked, it struck me that collage is the perfect art form for people suffering neurological damage because it works with the broken, reconstitutes it and makes it whole. Caton puts it like this: “The power of collage is the freedom of choice, the rebuilding of a story that may tell us something about the patients’ lives. It may also reflect the fragmentary nature of their memories.”

We talk also about one of the most elegant and lucid pieces on display, The Road to Recovery. The drawing of Homerton hospital looks like something out of Laurent de Brunhoff’s Babar books. “It describes a maze with many ways in – but only one way out,” Caton observes. But the exhibition gently disagrees. Its uplifting suggestion is that there are many ways out and through. Until 18 September, Hackney Museum, London E8

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Hackney Wick, East London’s creative hotspot for art and music, opens the doors to its studios and galleries next weekend for this year’s Hackney WickED Art Festival.

Launching on Friday 30 July, the three day festival will be respendent with art, music and pop up events. Hackney WickED will offer festival-goers the chance to explore Hackney Wick’s numerous studios and galleries, which will be showcasing specially curated exhibitions and a plethora of performing artists, photographers, dancers, film-makers, painters, sculptors and musicians – all of which will encourage you to get involved.

In the afternoons, Queen’s Yard will be transformed into a live music stage where a host of bands will be performing up until the 11pm curfew.

On the Sunday, the festival will bring you the fifth annual Hackney Wick Coracle Regatta on the banks of the River Lea, before the evening’s closing ceremony that includes a carnival procession, the Burning of the Wicker Man and a special surprise.

Hackney WickED art festival
Friday 30 July  – Sunday 1 August
Various locations, Hackney Wick

Full event listings and artists/studio websites available on the Hackney Wicked website.

Follow Hackney WickED festival on twitter, join Hackney Wicked on facebook, and view photos from the previous years’ events here.

Field Day Photo:© Zeitgeist Agency

With only one week to go, Victoria Park’s Field Day is gearing up for its biggest year yet. The festival is bringing an ‘ear-watering’ selection of premier electronica and alternative talent together for a one-day East London Spectacular.

It features a headline slot from Grammy award-winning, Gallic indie posters Phoenix, a highly anticipated set from post-punk legends The Fall, and Atlas Sound’s only summer London appearance. Dance beats will be provided by electronica heavy-weights Caribou, Pantha Du Prince, Moderat and Mouse on Mars. The full Field Day lineup can be found here.

Fun will also be on offer at the perennially popular Village Mentality area, offering the true spirit of the village fair in a leafy border of Tower Hamlets and Hackney.  A mix of traditional side stalls and activities inspired by country pastimes and wholesome fete games for those of a playful disposition to take time out from aural stimulation.

Tickets cost £33.33 plus booking fee and are available from Seetickets and Ticketweb. After party tickets are available separately. For more information visit Field Day’s myspace page and Field Days’ facebook page.

Lovebox Festival 2010

The setting sun oozed amber light and cast a burnt orange tint over thousands of faces in the crowds, pints of pear cider spilled from paper cups and sun-kissed festival-goers’ dancing feet were covered in dust. This was the scene in the bustling East end last weekend when Lovebox 2010 took over Victoria Park, offering 50,000 musos respite from the sticky city heat of the Underground.

Following in Glastonbury’s fluky footsteps, Lovebox was spared rain – though lack of foresight and preparation left many a pale shoulder slightly pinker on departure. Despite the bombardment of in your face corporate sponsorship – Lovebox continues to live up to its 2008 award of ‘Best Medium Sized Festival’ as voted by the UK Festival Awards. Started in 2003 by Groove Armada as a one-day festival, it has since expanded in size and this year it added a third day to its bill.

Roxy Music, Grace Jones and Dizzee Rascal graced the main stage throughout the weekend, wooing the crowds. But rather than racing for a hot seat in the headliner crowd, many opted for the smaller stages and tents. The Rizla Arena bounced into life with the Trojan Sound system and revellers skanked along to a lively afternoon set. North-London band Man Like Me put on one of their famed quirky performances in The Cat Flap tent and had an audience spilling out through the seams. The NYC Downlow – a replica New York City tenement block – had a queue stretching from the door out into the festival for the duration.

Two drag queens clad in spandex danced around in a mock hotel bedroom – part of the set – serenading the crowd with their comical lyrics whilst fake moustaches were being issued below them at the ‘Porn Kiosk’. They call themselves ‘the world’s first travelling homo disco’ and offer a dark sweatbox with disco, soul, funk and dance sets.

Lovebox offers a perfect escape from the hustle and bustle of the city – a weekend of eclectic music and alfresco dancing. But you can hop on the tube home afterwards – saving you the hassle of blindly navigating your way back to your tent…

Muslim schoolgirls dress a dummy at the Faith and Fashion workshop Photograph: Mark Tillie

This article was written by Sarfraz Manzoor, for guardian.co.uk on Wednesday 21st July 2010 22.42 Europe/London

In a first floor classroom in the Hackney campus of the London School of Fashion a small group of young schoolgirls are wrapping clothes on to tailor’s dummies.

They are using conventional clothes in unconventional ways – turning ties into belts and baggy T-shirts into neckwear. The idea is to challenge traditional notions of normality in fashion.

The approach is a common one for aspiring designers but it feels especially appropriate for the 20 assembled schoolgirls, all of whom are British and Muslim and all of whom are in traditional Islamic dress.

The girls are taking part in an initiative called Faith and Fashion that is using the widespread fixation of Muslim women’s dress as a starting point for a discussion on how to create fashion that reflects a British Muslim sensibility. Sophia Tillie, the 28-year-old white, British woman who runs the scheme, converted to Islam while at university. She is now engaged in trying to examine how the concept of modesty – so essential to Islamic thinking – can be interpreted differently depending on the context of time and place.

“The Saudi tradition of wearing the niqab is very literalist,” she explains, “and it is part of a puritanical movement that is reductionist in its doctrine. But reading more widely I was struck by the flexibility of Islamic thinking and that was what this initiative seeks to encourage.”

The scheme is backed by the Three Faiths Forum, an interfaith organisation that works at grassroots to support harmony and confront prejudice between different religious communities.

For Tillie the media obsession with the burqa obscures the richly diverse ways that Muslims throughout the centuries have chosen to dress. “Banning the burqa will send it underground and oppress further the women who are still perceiving it as the only way to dress to be a fully observant Muslim. The reason I set up Faith and Fashion was to create a safe space where we could look at why some Muslim women have chosen to interpret some verses of the Koran to support the burqa and by opening up that space that allows opportunities for other choices and other interpretations.”

Among the girls who are busy wrapping a pale blue pair of trousers around the neck of the mannequin is 15-year-old Tasnem. “I’ve always been really interested in fashion,” she says. “I like stuff that is funky, if I was wearing a hijab I would like to wear a massive bow with it.”

The girls are all competition winners having beaten more than 100 other girls by producing portfolios which featured drawings of clothes they had designed which expressed their British and Muslim identities. The girls all attend Islamic schools in different parts of London and some of their portfolios included poetic explanations of their decision to wear the hijab. “Allah doesn’t look for our outer but our inner beauty,” reads one verse. “Men walking down the street, ‘Oh she’s a cutie’/Women wear the hijab for protection/Not for affection/We have education/And we want an occupation.”

For the young women involved there is no contradiction between being interested in fashion and being observant Muslims. Says Nadaya: “I was on the bus and someone asked me why I was wearing a hijab – it frustrates me because they don’t know anything about me and yet they are judging me.”

Another of the young women, Musafa, 15, was dressed in a full veil that obscured everything except her eyes. She was also wearing an electric green jacket. “I like to dress nicely and I like to express myself through clothing,” she says. “People think that I must be forced to wear this but I came to the decision on my own and because all my five sisters and my mother wear it.”

During the three days that they are at the London College of Fashion they will develop design and IT skills and well as being given advice by design experts. It is the sort of training that they would usually never have the chance to receive in their Islamic schools.

“The great thing about this course is that the girls are learning that dressing modestly does not have to be boring,” says Hassaanah, a teacher in an Islamic school in Tooting Bec.

“We do study aspects of identity at our school but the aspect of understanding other religions and their history of modesty has been new.”

By the end of the afternoon the three tailor’s dummies stood in their new outfits. “This was my chance to really be creative,” said Tasnem proudly. “It was so great to be able to meet other Muslim girls who were also into fashion.”

• This article was amended on 22 July 2010. The original subheading said more than 100 girls had won places on the Faith and Fashion course. There were 20 competition winners.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Ping Brazil
1pm-9pm Saturday 24 July
Gillett Square, Dalston

A day of Ping Pong and Brazilian dance, music and food.

1-5pm Ping Pong – to Brazilian Music and fun Brazilian related activities
2pm – 3.45pm: DJs playing Brazilian music
3.45pm to 5.00pm: Pe de Jurema

Pe-de-Jurema is a band from Brazil based in energetic roots Brazilian music such as forro (baiao & xote), maracatu (baque virado), samba de roda, ciranda, samba-coco and more. Their performance always involves the public who is always invited and motivated to dance creating a proper Brazilian atmosphere. The Pe-de-Jurema members teach workshops on roots Brazilian rhythms on percussion every Thursday from 6pm to 8pm at Passing Clouds.

Workshop of Brazilian Rhythms
There will be a great selection of Brazilian Traditional Rhythms such as samba-coco, ciranda, ijexa (afoxe), baques (maracatu) and many others.

Find out more here.

5.00pm to 6.00pm: Maracatu Mafua

Maracatu Mafua stands for the rhythms and movements of Brazil’s Northeast State of Brazil – Pernambuco. Having one of the most traditional maracatu groups , MARACATU NACAO CAMALEAO as God father, we bring maracatu and ciranda to UK. Their colours represent the orixas and energies we get inspired from Yellow for Oxum ( wealth), Red/Pink for Iansa ( Strenght) and White for Oxala ( Peace). 

6pm-8pm: Dj Fabricio D. Vyzor + samba workshop

Brazilian Rare Grooves + Bossa Nova / Samba / Samba Jazz / Samba Rock / Tropicalia + Jazz / Funk / Soul / Dub / Reggae / Ska / Hip Hop / Breaks + some Experimental Stuff + Chill Out + Ambient.

Fabio Louis  -  samba instructor from Guanabara Club (Holborn)

8pm-9pm: Capoeira with Kabula

Kabula is a community organisation. At the heart of its project is Capoeira Angola, an exhilarating and elegant blend of dance, play, fight and music of Afro-Brazilian origin.

9pm onwards: DJs until 2pm @ Downstairs at the Vortex.

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This project receives the support of Hackney Council.

Seymour Suite, 2010, by Raqib Shaw

This article was written by Adrian Searle, for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 20th July 2010 21.31 Europe/London

Summer is the time for commercial galleries either to shove a bit of stock on the walls and go on holiday, leaving some minion or other to mind the shop, or to do something more adventurous. White Cube in Hoxton Square, London, has mounted a large and ambitious drawing show, Kupferstichkabinett: Between Thought and Action, a survey of more than 200 drawings by 55 artists hung in groups and clusters and runs, at least two deep, around sombre, dark walls. The atmosphere is studious and quiet, the viewers attentive as they nose up to the frames or peer down into a number of vitrines.

Here are etchings of heads and bodies by Lucian Freud; a gridded-up preparatory drawing of a dining recess by Patrick Caulfield; a sketch for a neon sculpture of a man masturbating by Bruce Nauman. Freud skates a needle across a prepared copper plate as he draws heads on pillows and the bulk of Big Sue the Benefits Supervisor. Caulfield takes a sharpened pencil and dutifully traces and copies 1960s furniture, a Sunday supplement style for living that now looks quaint and retro. Tracey Emin remembers and draws blindly through a sheet of carbon paper, peeling it back to reveal the bluish smudges and the line, a lamp-post and a girl on her back on the Margate esplanade. Is the drawing for us or for herself, the artist just wanting to see what a memory looks like?

Some drawings, such as Caulfield’s, are made out of practical necessity, a step on the way to making a painting. Others satisfy different but no less urgent needs – the needs of the ego and the libido, the unstoppable urge to invent; sometimes it is to keep up a constant supply of market product. A drawing by Damien Hirst may be scurrilously bad, with its doomy scribbled pronouncements about mortality, but it is cheaper to buy than a skull or a shark in a tank.

Drawing is the basis of all art and visual thinking, writes Deanna Petherbridge in her magisterial new book, The Primacy of Drawing. Drawing renders thought visible, she says. But what thoughts are these, running around the walls? Say Something Once Why Say It Again, writes Harland Miller in capital letters, quoting a Talking Heads lyric. Then he repeats it, on another sheet of paper. Why say it at all, you might ask. More interestingly, you might ask about the difference between the written word and the drawn word. Gabriel Orozco’s Fast Mind drawings look so cursory as to be mere traces of the hand’s passage, drawn so fast that thoughts can’t keep up. The drawing itself is the thought, not some idea that preceded it.

Orozco’s thin wandering lines, arcing and snaking, may just be an elegant way of occupying the blank proposition of a sheet of white paper. But it is hard not to see bodies emerging out of this emptiness. Orozco’s line has both vitality and reserve. He knows when to stop.

An artist’s hand might draw with an innate elegance and authority, or it can be clunky, like a shout, or tentative and full of doubt. Julie Mehretu’s drawings always appear as a kind of rushing, hurrying energy, layer after layer of scratches, dabs, dabbles and judders as she switches from graphite to watercolour, ballpoint pen to bits of coloured tape. Some parts of her drawings are slow and deliberated, others are a tangle of colliding marks. Does it all add up, or is it just so much excitation and energy?

However physically insubstantial a drawing is, it is a complex, even profound activity. Petherbridge writes of what she calls ”graphic incontinence”, the inspirational excess and uncontrollable urge “that leads an artist to draw constantly on any available surface”. Many of us who are not even artists engage in this sort of thing, in constant doodling and scribbling and jotting without purpose. Drawing can be a kind of fiddling, an orchestration of what might otherwise be a kind of itch and scratch. Drawing belongs as much to the body as the mind, the hum and fizz of the nervous system.

Drawings reveal: they are often more accessible and intimate than the sculptures and paintings in whose wake they often come, or which they anticipate. And because most of us have the experience of drawing, even though we may profess to be no good at it, drawings have a kind of familiarity and directness we can feel at home with. They demand close attention; they stay with us in ways other kinds of art don’t. Petherbridge notes (paraphrasing Walter Pater) that while most painting at the beginning of the 20th century aspired to the condition of drawing, a hundred years on most drawing aspires to the condition of the sketch. A lot of artists now, you might think, aren’t in a position to aspire to more.

But as the White Cube’s show demonstrates, drawing goes much further than sketching. Raqib Shaw’s sea monsters and richly detailed sexualised gods seem to aspire to the condition of jewellery, while Jake and Dinos Chapman have made cramped, peculiar, bucolic scenes of a fantasy Germany, signed and dated as though they had been drawn by Adolf Hitler, wannabe artist, at the close of the first world war. They are like fake historical documents. Michael Landy’s careful pencil portraits take a kind of sixth-form acuity to a level of compelling strangeness. Gary Hume’s deceptively schematic works are drawn both on paper and on the glass or Perspex frame, creating real shadows and the illusion of modelling as one walks around them.

Drawings can be tender or belligerent, introspective or stupid, even frightening and intense. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s jumbly, coarse heads, Rachel Kneebone’s confusions between the body’s insides and outsides (women’s torsos and limbs writhing into colons and penises) and Fred Tomaselli’s constellations of stars, galaxies and drugs: all are conceptually as well as physically rich.

A drawing might be labour intensive or take a few seconds. Which is better? Nobody knows. Otherwise banal artists can show a real talent here; beefed-up reputations can show their weaknesses. At best, drawings are closer to a lover’s secrets or a midnight conversation than a speech at a big public occasion. The drawing as grand machine or mere demonstration of skill and effort doesn’t interest me: it declares its labour before anything else.

Petherbridge’s 500-page study should convince anyone of drawing’s centrality, its often apparent simplicity and also its deep mysteriousness. Hers is a great book, written by someone who both draws and thinks seriously about an activity in which it is often almost impossible to tell what was made 500 years or five minutes ago. The form transcends its time, and the mores of the moment, while being always grounded in a period or an epoch, a specific moment of engagement. If drawing is a language it can also be a parting remark, something said on a street corner as a friend turns and walks away that wounds you and you remember always.

The Primacy of Drawing by Deanna Petherbridge is published by Yale University Press.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Are you a budding Poet Laureate?  Would you like to try your hand with a poem about place to The John Betjeman Poetry Competition open to 11-14 year olds? The first prize is £1,000, (£500 to the winner and £500 to the English department of their school). The first prize winner, runner-up and highly commended will also each win £50 of book tokens.

Closing date for entries is Saturday 31 July. Full details of – and an entry form for - the competition can be found online here.

Alternatively, downloadable entry forms can be sent to ‘The John Betjeman Young People’s Poetry Competition’, c/o Justin Gowers, 72 Vicars Hill, London, SE13 7JL.  The prize-winners will be announced in early September, and the category winners will be invited on the stage to read their poems  at St Pancras International station on Tuesday 5 October.