Calderstones Mansion House

The Reader Organisation is delighted to announce that we have been awarded 'preferred bidder status' for Calderstones Mansion House, in Calderstones Park, by Liverpool City Council.

Calderstones Mansion House (c.Dave Jones)

We will transform the 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, our founder and director, explains:

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.

We share 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.

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 and Cllr Kennedy

Here at The Reader Organisation, we have substantial experience of successfully creating new products and managing projects. Since 2008, we've more than doubled the income generated by our social enterprise activity, increased our staff numbers by over 200%, and increased our Get Into Reading provision by nearly 300%.

We're now rolling our sleeves up to enter a six month planning period with our partners and consultants, Cass Associates (architects) and Pulse Regeneration, before taking up residency in Calderstones this coming August; we will also be keeping our current home in West Everton. Development of the full International Centre for Reading and Wellbeing will take place in phases and is expected to be completed in December 2015.

We're thrilled about this local, national, and international opportunity to share reading and connect with communities in Liverpool and beyond. You can follow our progress right here on the blog as we continue to build the Reading Revolution!