Every festival has its landmarks. At Latitude, some announce themselves: the lake, the coloured sheep, the woods, the music and arts spilling from every corner of Henham Park. Others are quieter but every bit as powerful, and none more constant than the Suffolk Libraries tent in the Kids Area, where Suffolk’s librarians have been reading stories to festival children since the very first Latitude in 2006.
Twenty editions on, they are still there. In a festival that has evolved and reinvented itself many times over two decades, the sight of a small child curled up with a borrowed book while a headliner soundchecks in the distance remains one of Latitude’s most enduring images.
The idea is beautifully simple. Take everything a good library does; story times, craft sessions, book borrowing, a calm corner when the day gets too big, and put it in a tent in Henham Park. For families navigating four days of music, comedy and theatre, the library tent has become somewhere to recharge, to wind down before bed, or to discover a new favourite author between sets.
The team behind it has worn a few different badges over the years but since June 2025 the library service has returned to Suffolk County Council under the name Suffolk Community Libraries. Through every change, the Latitude tradition has carried on unbroken, staffed by librarians and volunteers who give up their summer weekend to read, sing, glue, glitter and recommend, all with the knowledge that for many children, Latitude is where a lifelong reading habit begins.
The programme has never stood still, with changing themes each year, nods to that year’s Summer Reading Challenge, costumes and collaborations with organisations such as Suffolk Archives, and visiting artists including storyteller Tonia Wilson of Aspire Black Suffolk, writer Yolanda Mercy, storyteller Kirsty Tallent and poet Ben Macpherson. Last years Forest of Stories, a reading programme for under-fives, brought a forest corner illustrated with a family of woodland animals…perfect for a festival held among the trees.
For Latitude’s 20th anniversary the Suffolk Community and Lowestoft Library tent returns to the Kids Area with a storyteller in residence, roving events and a chill-out space.
It says something about Latitude that a library sits so naturally alongside its headliners. This has always been a festival built on words as much as music, from its poetry and literature stages to its on-site bookshop, and the library tent is where that ethos starts youngest. Somewhere in Suffolk right now there is an adult who borrowed their first proper book from a tent in a field in 2006. This summer, their children can do the same.
And for families who want to keep the story going after the tents come down, the timing could not be better. Suffolk Community Libraries’ Reading Quest, the county’s biggest free summer reading programme for children, launches in libraries across Suffolk just days before the festival. This year’s theme is Curious Creatures, illustrated by Ipswich-born author Matt Robertson, one of the many authors and illustrators to feature in the Latitude Kids Area this year.
Latitude takes place at Henham Park, Suffolk, 23rd to 26th July 2026. The Suffolk Community and Lowestoft Library tent is in the Kids Area all weekend.
