Myths and Legends: A Classics Competition

Myths and Legends is a FREE outreach classics competition which has run for over 70 years at the University of Leeds, and is a celebration of Classics, Reading and Performance. The competition is aimed at Key Stage 3 students (year 7-9) and is a great opportunity to introduce Classics to school students already familiar with English, History and Drama, highlighting the links to their current subjects and developing their oracy/public speaking skills in an exciting way.

The competition has now finished for 2024/25 Academic year. See photos of our Campus Final held in April 2025 below. The competition will return in 2025/26. 

If you are interested in participating next year, you can get a feel for the competition by accessing and downloading the teacher handbook or reading the competition timeline below.

This programme is generously supported by The Classical Association.

Read the privacy notice for this project.  

11th November 2024 - Myths & Legends: A Classics Competition opens!

Key Stage 3 students are invited to choose one of the categories, read up on the corresponding text and/or mythical characters and prepare their competition entries. Teachers will be encouraged to support students whilst they work on their entries over the winter months. Categories can be found in the teacher handbook.

23:59pm 27th February 2025 - Competition Entry Deadline 

Teachers are required to submit their class' entries by this deadline. At this point only written scripts from students need to be submitted.

11th March 2025 - Finalists of the competition are announced

After all submissions have been judged by our panel of Academics at the University, they will shortlist a number of students to go through as finalists to the competition.

27th March 2025 - Confidence building workshop (online)

The student finalists will be invited to an online workshop based on public speaking and confidence building, to support students in turning their written scripts into an in-person presentation ready for the competition final.

24th April 2025 - Campus Final Day

All student finalists, their teacher(s) and their school peers will be invited to the University of Leeds campus to speak/perform their competition entry in front of a panel of University of Leeds academic judges, who will make their decisions and announce our winners! The Campus final day will also include enrichment activities for all students to gain an insight of what it is like to study at the University of Leeds.

[The Classics Competition] was one of the highlights of my secondary school experience. I can still remember the opening lines of the first piece I recited, aged 12. I took part again several years later (reciting part of Ariadne’s speech from Catullus 64), which helped build my confidence in the subject. Most importantly, the competition made the idea of university seem accessible and exciting. And like the JACT Latin summer school (which was transformative for me), it showed me that there was a community of other people out there who cared about this stuff and were even willing to dedicate their lives to it.

- Professor Verity Platt (Department of Classics, Cornell University)