Professional storytellers, experienced playwrights and authors will team up with aspiring youngsters as a brand new festival hits Lowestoft.

Untold Tales is a new project for Year 4 students and above, which has been running in schools for the past two months as a series of workshops have been delivered.

The festival, which is being run to help unlock the creative ideas bubbling inside every young person, will see the students work with professional storytellers, experienced playwrights and authors before their stories are performed by professional actors.

And in July selected plays written as part of the festival will be performed by a company of professional actors at the Marina Theatre in Lowestoft.

Untold Tales is divided into three parts, each with its own focus – Act One: Telling Tales; Act Two: Words, Words, Words and Act Three: Pens to Paper – with the first two acts currently being delivered in the schools.

Between April and May the third act will begin with writing workshops at Easter ahead of the Untold Tales Festival performance at the Marina Theatre in July.

A Marina Theatre spokesman said: 'The festival will be led by storyteller Simon Bridge, playwright James McDermott alongside three facilitators – Lisanne van Ingen, Will Isgrove and Lizzie Stanley.

'This project is part of Making Waves Together, a wider partnership project led jointly by Great Yarmouth Borough Council and Waveney District Council, and funded by the national Great Place Scheme, which is seeing communities and organisations in both areas work together to boost the cultural offer and drive cultural re-imagination as a way of supporting success in the seaside towns.'

Making Waves Together is largely funded with a grant from the Great Place Scheme, delivered by Arts Council England, the Heritage Lottery Fund and Historic England.