Some of literature’s greatest heroes and most dastardly villains are helping Bradford Primary School children improve their reading skills as part of a newly-launched literature festival.

The BD5 Literature Festival is run by the six primary schools in the postcode, and could be repeated on an annual basis if it proves a success.

After visiting the annual Ilkley Literature Festival last year, staff at the schools noticed how much their pupils had been engaged by the event, which featured live book readings and performances.

But they found that there were no similar festivals in Bradford, something that inspired the schools to get together and change.

Starting this week, the BD5 Literacy Festival will see students performing classic tales like Fantastic Mr Fox and Robin Hood at Kala Sangam arts centre.

Under the title of Heroes And Villains, the festival will focus on the best goodies in the literary world and the protagonists who try to make their lives a misery.

Next week they will get to step back from performing and enjoy literary re-enactments by puppeteers, cartoonists and musicians as well as learning reading, writing and performance techniques.

Organisers hope that not only will the festival become an annual event for the area, but other schools may be inspired to hold similar festivals.

Taking part in the two-week event are St Stephen’s, Bowling Park; St Matthew’s, Horton Park; Marshfields and All Saints. Over the two weeks, staff hope that their pupils will learn to look beyond what is on the pages of the books they read, and ask questions like “what makes a hero” and “what motivates the villains”.

The heroes children will focus on include enthusiastic childminder Mary Poppins, the Big Friendly Giant and the original super sleuth Sherlock Holmes, while classic villains like Captain Hook, Cruella DeVil and Harry Potter’s Professor Snape will also be studied.

Each school worked for much of the last term on preparing for the festival with the help of Horrible Histories actor Luke Broughton.

St Stephen’s head Lesley Heathcoate, who is overseeing the festival, said the schools had a history of working together, and the festival had come from the mind of the schools rather than the Council or any outside groups. However, in the future she hopes the festival may be boosted by sponsors or external funders.

She said: “This is the culmination of a term’s work for the six schools. We want this to become an annual event. We went to the Ilkley Literature Festival and the children got to watch professional performances, but there was nothing like that in Bradford. The children loved it. They also have festivals like this in York and Grassington, but there wasn’t anything in Bradford.

“The schools in BD5 are all very close so we are used to working together. Getting together and organising events like this really helps the children’s reading and speech as well as spelling, punctuation and grammar.”

This week’s workshops and performances at Kala Sangam include Victorian drama The Street Child, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream and Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox. There will also be new versions of classic stories Macbeth, renamed Beth’s Glowing Rock, and Rosie, inspired by Dahl’s Matilda.

Next week the schools will visit the Alhambra Theatre, Bolling Hall and St Stephen’s Church to watch performances by puppeteers, theatre groups, cartoonists and singers.