The Staffordshire Signal Weekly: Stoke's first ever book festival, Rachel Shenton's Gladstone Girls wants local faces, and Gnosall takes best kept village

Stoke-on-Trent's first ever book festival opens this Saturday, the New Vic is looking for Potteries people to bring Rachel Shenton's Gladstone Girls to the stage, and Gnosall is crowned Staffordshire's best kept village. This week in The Staffordshire Signal Weekly.

Dear Readers,

Monday was World News Day, when more than a thousand newsrooms across the world said the same thing on the same day: facts matter, and so do the people who go and get them. For the first time, a small county newsroom from Staffordshire was on that list. We wrote about why we signed up, what AI means for local news, and the eight things you can do to keep a newsroom like ours alive. If you read one thing of ours this week that isn't strictly news, make it that one.

Something else worth telling you. The Staffordshire Signal has been accepted onto the BBC's Local Democracy Reporting Service, which means we can now draw on council and public service reporting from across the county alongside our own. You'll spot the first of it in the Fulford Primary story below, and there will be more.

This week: Stoke-on-Trent gets its first ever book festival and we've written the guide to it, the New Vic wants local people (and anyone who can hand paint a plate) for Rachel Shenton's Gladstone Girls, Beartown are turning the old Signal Box at Goods Yard into a taproom, Gnosall is officially the best kept village in Staffordshire, and VisitEngland has been round with a clipboard and rather liked what it saw.

On a personal note, I attended the Stoke Book Festival launch briefing and came away with a notebook full of things I hadn't expected, including that most of the people running it are doing so in their spare time, and that the festival logo was briefly mistaken for a Slinky. Full guide below. Buy a ten pound ticket, and you're paying for a toddler in Bentilee to have a free morning of songs. That is the sort of maths I can get behind.

Until next Wednesday.

Jenna