Refugee Week: The Day the War Came

Please bring £20 cash with you on the night to pay for your ticket. Tickets will give you one chair illustration and one free welcome drink (glass of wine, beer, soft drink).

Join author Nicola Davies, illustrator Rebecca Cobb and charity Help Refugees for this very special event during Refugee Week.

Nicola and Rebecca will be discussing their powerful picture book, The Day War Came with Reviews Editor for The School Librarian and Chair of the CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medals, Joy Court. They will be exploring the themes and inspiration behind this tale about a child fleeing the terrors of war and sharing the importance of raising awareness for humanitarian causes.

The Day War Came stemmed from Nicola Davies' poem of the same name, which drew attention to the 3,000 unaccompanied Syrian children the UK government decided not to give a safe haven in 2016 – Nicola called on illustrators, authors and children to paint, draw or sketch an empty chair and share it on Twitter with #3000chairs

Following this campaign, we asked children's book illustrators to send us their chair illustrations and we have 100 illustrations from some of the country's most notable illustrators, including artwork from Shirley Hughes, Nick Sharratt and Shaun Tan. Their creations will be displayed on the night and everyone will be given a raffle ticket which will correspond to a randomly allocated chair illustration which you will then be able to collect at the end.

Choose Love t-shirts and paperback copies of The Day War Came will also be available to buy on the night.

All money from ticket sales will go to Help Refugees. You must register for a ticket to secure your place.