Ellen Bianchini is Director of The Big Malarkey Festival, Hull Libraries summer festival for children and families which takes places over a week in the city’s East Park.
She has worked all her life in arts education, since doing a student placement with Welsh National Opera in 1984 supporting a large-scale community opera project. After working with Leicester Haymarket Theatre’s Outreach and Education team for eight years, she founded The Spark Children’s Arts Festival which she ran from 2003 until 2012. After a short spell working as a teaching assistant in Leicester’s Children’s Hospital School, she joined Hull Libraries in 2016 to help set up a new children’s literature festival. The BigMalarkey was launched in 2017 as part of Hull 2017 City of Culture, and celebrates storytelling,
creativity and Hull Libraries’ rich offer for children aged 0-16 in the city.
