Andy Burnham MP

Andy has become a supporter of our work  after visiting one of our Get Into Reading groups in Wigan earlier this year and will be talking to our director Jane Davis at the conference about the difference reading has made to his life:

I have experienced The Reader Organisation’s shared reading groups first-hand and have seen that it’s a brilliant way to bring people together and improve wellbeing in a relaxed and enjoyable atmosphere. As an English graduate myself, I know how important literature is for helping us think about the world we live in and how we relate to others.

I am looking forward to talking to delegates at the Shared Reading for Healthy Communities conference about the impact books have had on my own life and how projects like this can help to create stronger, healthier communities.

Shared Reading for Healthy Communities will examine how our pioneering shared reading model addresses the need for social inclusion, meaningful activity and better health in the UK and beyond. The day’s packed schedule will look at how shared reading works for people and communities across the areas of across public and mental health, libraries, education, addiction recovery, and dementia care.

Other speakers include Professor Louis Appleby, National Clinical Director for Offender Health and Chair of the National Suicide Prevention Advisory Group, who will be discussing ‘Finding A New Language for Mental Health’.

Following events in Wigan and Liverpool, the day will include an evaluation of our Reading in Secure Environments (RISE) pilot project, funded by Arts Council England. Cutting edge research investigating the effects of shared reading on people suffering with chronic pain, and a report on poetry and brain-imaging will also be central to exploring the exciting and emerging links between literature and good health.

The final few spaces are still available for Shared Reading for Healthy Communities – make sure you don’t miss out on what promises to be an inspiring and hugely informative day. See our Conference 2013 page to view and download the full day’s programme and to book your place.

The Reader Organisation is delighted to invite you to Connect with us at Calderstones. We will be hosting two public open days at The Mansion House in Calderstones Park, Liverpool, on Friday 12th and Saturday 13th April, 10am-3pm.

Earlier this year we were proud to announce that Liverpool City Council had awarded us ‘preferred bidder status’ for Calderstones Mansion House, Coach House and Stable Yard and that we plan to bring them back to life as The International Centre for Reading and Wellbeing at Calderstones. We have been overwhelmed by your support and good wishes for this new project, so we’d love anyone who is interested in our vision for the development to come along and talk to us.

The open days will provide an opportunity to meet members of our team, find out more about our existing work, and, of course, enjoy plenty of shared reading! We’re very keen for as many people as possible to share their hopes and ideas for the future use of the buildings at Calderstones, and for members of the local community to contribute their personal thoughts to the Calderstones Memory Wall.

Jane Davis, our founder and director, explains:

“We understand that The Mansion House is a much loved Liverpool landmark – we love it too! Our vision is to create a space where everyone is welcome to read, learn, play, make new friends and find new opportunities.

We’re really looking forward to welcoming people into The Mansion House for the first time to connect with us at Calderstones.”

Activities at the open days will include:

• Free shared reading taster sessions
• Free children’s Story Time sessions and fun craft activities
• Tea and cake
• Books and bric-a-brac stall
• Live music on the forecourt, Friday 12^th April 1pm-2pm only.

Cllr Malcolm Kennedy, Liverpool City Council’s Cabinet Member for Regeneration, said:

“We are really excited about the Reader Organisation’s plans for The Mansion House. They have some fantastic ideas which we believe will breathe new life into the building and make it a focal point for the community.

We are now working together on a series of events in Calderstones Park, which will give people the chance to set foot inside this historic building, find out more about the plans and share their own ideas.  All of our public events will feed into our work to make sure The Mansion House, and the wider park, is a vibrant and exciting place to visit.”

We’re currently working with the council and our partners – Mersey Care NHS Trust, Plus Dane Group and CRILS at the University of Liverpool – to develop our plans and will begin running regular shared reading groups in the Mansion House from May.

Getting to Calderstones: Map
Parking is in the public car park accessed from Calderstones Road. Please do not park outside the Mansion House. Buses run regularly from the city centre to Mather Avenue (86, 86A) and Menlove Avenue (76). A member of our team will be looking forward to greeting you at the front door of the Mansion House.

For more information about The Mansion House Open Days, please contact Sophie Povey at sophiepovey@thereader.org.uk or on 0151 207 7207.W

We hope to see you there!

Our Get Into Reading project is commissioned by health services across the UK,  but unlike the growing number of ‘Books on Prescription’ and ‘Bibliotheraphy’ schemes, we have chosen not to limit the description of our model as ‘therapy’. We believe literature exists to address the human condition, as our founder and director Jane Davis explains:

“Those medical words – prescription, therapy – which at first glance carry a medical imprimatur of seriousness, have largely come from the pharmaceutical and psychotherapeutic industries, and actually point to a re-positioning of the inner life as a problem to be solved by experts, by others.

We increasingly feel the pressure to talk about our work in medicalised terms – intervention, service, outcomes – terms which limit the power of what humanly it is that is making the difference. I want to find a new language, so that people don’t have to say, ‘I’m sick’, when they’re suffering the human condition.”

Last year, we provided 92,400 unique shared reading experiences through our work with health, library, education, adult social care services and other bodies. The personalised model, which enables even non-readers to join in as everything is read aloud in the group, is now backed up with strong qualitative and quantitative evidence from researchers.

At the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust in Liverpool, patients are currently taking part in a shared reading group as part of a chronic pain research project, the initial findings of which will be revealed at the conference.

Dr Andrew Jones, consultant in anaesthesia and pain medicine, at the hospital, says:

“Early indications are showing that the reading group is making a difference to people in our hospital but there is something intangible, a deeper impact beyond that, which we can’t measure using existing qualitative research methods.”

The conference will also explore how the benefits of the shared reading model extends beyond the traditional definition of ‘health’, addressing issues of reoffending, isolation, community cohesion, and reading for pleasure with young people.

Our Get Into Reading group members report benefits to their overall wellbeing and state of mind. A group member at HMP Wormwood Scrubs, commented that:

“The reading group has boosted my self-esteem and given me more self-confidence when I have discussions with staff and in general; it has encouraged me to read more in my spare-time, which has released a lot of stress off my shoulders as I have been suffering from depression.”

Great literature connects people. There is nothing more ancient, nor more deeply healing than that.

For more information about Shared Reading for Healthy Communities, including how to book your place, please click here or call Sophie Johnson on 07973 247890.

We’re delighted to have raised a staggering amount – over £17,664, which exceeded our goal of £14,000 in less than a year – and thanks to your generosity, have employed our new Apprentice Zoe, who’s a very welcome addition to our Wirral team and a valued part of The Reader Organisation family.

Team TRO take on the challenge of the Santa Dash 2012 to raise money for the Apprenticeship: Building Opportunities for Life Programme

Your vital support of our various fundraising activities since April 2012, including taking on the Three Peaks Challenge amongst many other things including bag packing, cake and Amazon book sales, the Santa Dash 2012, busking literature, literary half marathons, numerous raffles and a Poetry by Heart event in London have ensured that we can provide our new Apprentice with the opportunity to work practically and creatively in the local community and even beyond, the chance to develop skills and confidence that will impact upon them personally as well as professionally, to be nurtured in a caring, friendly atmosphere, and, above all, to have their life truly-changed with the means to build it independently.

Here’s wishing Zoe the very best of luck in her future at TRO – and thank you for being involved in making a huge difference to a young life.

(c) Dave Jones

The Reader Organisation, will transform Calderstones Mansion House, Coach House and Stable Yard into an International Centre for Reading and Wellbeing at Calderstones, working with three key local partners, Mersey Care NHS Trust, Plus Dane Group and the University of Liverpool’s CRILS (Centre for Research into Reading, Information and Linguistic Systems).

Jane Davis, founder and director of The Reader Organisation:

Our vision for Calderstones is a community for everyone, with reading at its heart. We will ask people what they want and need and then connect them with it.  We think that at Calderstones we have the perfect location to make this a regeneration success story for our city.

The restored buildings will create a beautiful facility for local people, yet at the same time connect us to international visitors.

At Calderstones we will all connect.

The Reader Organisation shares Liverpool City Council’s vision of Liverpool being ‘equal, well and green’ by 2020. Our proposal respects the heritage of the beautiful Grade II status buildings, the character of the surrounding Calderstones Park and the views of local people, whilst creating a sustainable social enterprise that will change people’s lives. With reading firmly at its heart, we will:

• Hugely improve the offer to park users with a superb bistro, conference, events and training facilities, gardens, gallery and shop;
• Establish an international hub for shared reading practice, training and academic research;
• Support local community groups and community entrepreneurs through the provision of meeting rooms, activities and workshop studios;
• Reach some of the most vulnerable people in our society, creating aspiration and opportunities for personal development;
• Create jobs and provide volunteering, mentoring, apprenticeship and employment opportunities to service users and local graduates;
• Consult the local community on their views and ideas.

(c) Roisin Hyland, The Reader Organisation

Liverpool Councillor Malcolm Kennedy, cabinet member for Regeneration said today:

I’m delighted that we have appointed The Reader Organisation to take over the Mansion House. They are a strong organisation with an excellent track record of growing their charity year-on-year.

There was a good deal of interest in the building, and we considered all the proposals carefully. We chose The Reader Organisation because we were impressed by what was a very strong bid. They have some fantastic ideas which we believe will not only bring the building back into use in a meaningful way but will help protect its future.

Jane Davis and Cllr Kennedy

We have an excellent track record in creating new products and managing projects. Since 2008, our social business has more than doubled its income, increased staff numbers by over 200% and increased its Get Into Reading group activity by nearly 300%.

The Reader Organisation now enters a six month planning period with its partners and consultants, Cass Associates (architects) and Pulse Regeneration. They expect to take up residency at Calderstones this coming August, whilst retaining their current base in West Everton. Development of the full International Centre for Reading and Wellbeing will be phased and expected to complete in December 2015.

Reading in the Concert Room in St. George’s Hall on Sunday 9th December 2012 at 6.30pm will be Liverpool born actor Cathy Tyson, award winning local author Frank Cottrell Boyce and author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin Louis de Bernières.

Our very special star readers will be lining up alongside musical performers from Liverpool Harmonic Gospel Choir and Georgina Aasgaard, a cellist with Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as readers from the team at The Reader Organisation, for a fantastic evening full of festive reading and entertainment.

Our festive event for children and families, the Ha’penny Readings, will also be returning, held on the same day in the same place at 2.30pm. The event for young readers features music, comedy capers, selected readings for the festive season and special guest, Angela Macmillan, editor of A Little, Aloud for Children – as well as an appearance from Santa himself (all children must be accompanied by an adult to the event).

Due to high demand for a limited number of tickets, tickets for the 2012 Penny Readings and Ha’penny Readings will be allocated by a public raffle. Each winner will receive one pair of tickets to their specified event.

Lines for the 2012 Penny Readings and Ha’penny Readings have now CLOSED. All ticket winners will be notified by Friday 23rd November 2012, receiving details on how to pick up their tickets.

50,000 free copies of the wonderful story, about two brothers from Mongolia who come to Merseyside but are forced to return to their homeland and their friend Julie, were distributed across Merseyside and travelled far beyond in our biggest book giveaway to date in March 2011, with hundreds of thousands of readers of all ages enjoying the tale. The Unforgotten Coat, funny and touching in equal measure, similarly enchanted the judges of the Guardian Children’s Fiction prize, who said it contained “”a very profound message dressed up in a magical, original, humorous story”.

Frank was inspired to write The Unforgotten Coat by the true story of a Mongolian schoolgirl he met while doing a reading at a local primary school whose family were forcibly deported from their home by immigration authorities. One of the things her classmates were most worried about was the fact she had left her coat behind, as she had said how cold it was in Mongolia. The image was one that haunted Frank, and set him to writing.

The Unforgotten Coat is a story that crosses all boundaries, with people of all ages and backgrounds being able to relate to it. This is why Frank was kind enough to write it as a gift to The Reader Organisation. Since the runaway success of Our Read 2011 – where Frank himself joined us for the book’s launch, reading the story aloud to a group of schoolchildren on a special train – we have read the story with many of our varied groups of readers in Get Into Reading groups across the UK.

Winning the prize in its 45th year is a massive achievement for Frank, and one which he’s especially proud of:

“I love the Guardian prize, the fact it’s given by other writers, and that it’s gone to books I loved reading like The Owl Service. It’s fantastic to win it anyway, but to win with something so exuberant, that was not trying to win any awards, is really great. This is a book that was written for fun, and for friendship.”

And we’re incredibly proud of Frank and The Unforgotten Coat – a gift to our readers across the world.

The Rural Libraries of Cajamarca Network was founded in 1971 by Father John Medcalf and has been adapted to suit the needs and expectations of the rural population using the service. The network is run entirely by volunteers, consisting 45 coordinators, who carry the books in backpacks over the mountains and exchange them every three months, and 500 librarians, who keep the books at their houses for local people to borrow up to two for a week at a time. Amongst the indigenous population in the Andes there are currently 74,000 registered readers within the network, although this number does not take into account the many other ‘listening readers’ who either can’t or don’t have the time to read but benefit from the books by listening to other people read from them.

The Rural Libraries have published 130 different books on a variety of topics which have been requested by readers from the indigenous population living in isolated communities. Amongst popular subjects are books which encourage the continuing of traditional crafts and skills such as weaving, dyeing, herbal medicine and farming skills, as well as the Peruvian constitution and law books which help local farmers and the community as a whole to establish their legal rights – essential, as the world’s second biggest goldmine operates on a mountain within the community. Stories are also shared throughout the network and across generations; traditional tales have been recorded by the elders in the community which have been transcribed and then published for the younger generations to read back to their families.

Living a basic lifestyle with no electricity, heating or plumbing and sustaining themselves from the land, the indigenous population have little access to the education system and books are viewed as unrelated to the lives of the community. The Rural Libraries Network has proved to be not just important in making links between books and people, but to the community’s way of life. One librarian and his family said that since the project began they had ‘lost the shame’ of living as second class citizens within Peru.

The Rural Libraries Network is supported in the UK by Sarah’s Rural Library Fund, a charity set up in memory of Sarah Heery, a librarian from Liverpool who visited the project in Cajamarca and was thoroughly impressed by the project and the commitment and enthusiasm shown by all of its volunteers. Sarah’s family and friends have been raising money for the Rural Libraries Network through the Fund since she died in 2008 and the Fund is the only regular donor for the project. They aim to raise £10,000 a year to support the running of the project and fundraise through a number of events in Liverpool and London.

Watch this video to find out more about The Rural Libraries of Cajamarca. For more information on supporting the project, visit Sarah’s Rural Library Fund’s donations page.

Back in 2002, TRO’s director Jane Davis set up two weekly reading groups for young mothers and adult learners in Birkenhead, with funding from the University of Liverpool’s widening participation fund. Her aim was to get books into the hands of people who needed them and to bring books and people together. From these two groups, a Reading Revolution has grown.

Ten years on, The Reader Organisation delivers over 300 Get Into Reading groups across the UK, from Glasgow to London, reaching over 1300 people aged from 3 to 103. We work with a diverse range of partners,including Mersey Care NHS Trust, Wirral and Liverpool Libraries, HMP Reading, Greater Manchester West Mental Health Trust, Bupa Care Homes, Idea Store, MIND, Tesco and Liverpool Hope University.

Impacts of the groups include increased personal confidence and reduced social isolation, improved emotional and psychological wellbeing, greater stability and support, and a growing love of books.

‘Get Into Reading has given me the confidence to move on to a better place.’ – Get Into Reading group member, Liverpool

Week by week, year by year, Get Into Reading is connecting people with great literature and each other, taking Shakespeare to supermarkets, poetry to prisons and Hardy to hospitals.

To mark the project’s tenth birthday, The Reader Organisation has put together a list of the most popular books from the past ten years of Get Into Reading and wants to find out who you would most like to hear reading these books aloud.

Click here to vote for your favourite story or poem and nominate your ideal reader. We will announce the results at the end of the month.

Be sure to stay with us throughout Sep10ber on our blog, Twitter and Facebook pages for many more celebrations…

Following on from the success of A Little, Aloud, we are very proud to present an anthology of stories and poems specially selected to read aloud with children and young people. All the extracts, ranging from modern-day favourites to timeless classics, have been chosen by The Reader Organisation’s experienced team of Young Person’s Project Workers and edited once again by Angela Macmillan.

With a foreword from Michael Morpurgo, there really is something for everyone, from Dracula to The Jumblies, Moonfleet to The Moomins, Dickens to Roald Dahl. There is no recommended age for this collection - we’ve no doubt that parents and grandparents, brothers and sisters, friends and carers, will enjoy reading them aloud as much as the person they are reading to. There’s also nothing to stop a child turning the tables and reading aloud themselves!

This is the perfect book for sharing and we want to hear your thoughts, comments, and stories on the book on the dedicated A Little, Aloud website. Tell us about your favourite bits, who you have been reading with, and where you’ve been reading it.  

You can buy A Little, Aloud for Children from all good bookshops, online, or by sending us a cheque – details can be found here. All royalties will go towards The Reader Organisation’s work, connecting people with great literature and each other.