Largest poetry lesson (multiple venues)

The largest poetry lesson (multiple venues) consisted of 43,516 participants and was achieved by Laura Mucha (UK) in schools across the world, on 3 October 2024.

Laura Mucha is a British author and poet. For 2024's National Poetry Day (UK), Laura had the ambitious plan of getting thousands of students to collaborate on something big.

Laura commented: "In light of poor and worsening literacy statistics in the UK and beyond, the purpose of the record attempt was to empower young people by giving them a voice and a positive and memorable experience of literacy by coming together with thousands of others to create a poem, turning as many young people as possible into participants of a GWR title."

The theme for 2024's poetry day was ‘counting'. For the project, Laura planned to co-write a poem about ‘what counts’ with 7-12 year olds up and down the country whilst also attempting to break a GWR title.

Five charities were involved in this attempt: National Poetry Day, the National Literacy Trust, Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (where Laura was broadcasting the lesson from), Poetry Society and Poetry Archive. It is also supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and Forward Arts Foundation.

Over 1,900 schools registered for participation. Laura was broadcast from the UK into school classrooms across the country with a number of schools participating from overseas too.

During the 45-minute interactive lesson, students voted and offered their ideas to complete the collaborative poem. Laura scoured thousands of entries from students to find common themes, words and ideas to weave into a poem.

The lesson ended with all students reading the poem out loud.

Common themes in the poem were family, friends, time, and love. Topics spanned across homework, wanting to play football, cost of living, being accepted by your friends, hoping to get a job one day and conflict.