September marks the 10th birthday of the excellent
Reader org and their Get into Reading campaign. Reader, we salute you.
With its mission to ‘bring about a reading revolution’, the charity’s read aloud groups have taken Shakespeare to supermarkets, poetry to prisons and Hardy to hospitals.
The project, which aims to connect people with great literature and each other, was started in 2002 by the charity’s director Jane Davis. She set up two weekly reading groups for young mothers and adult learners in Birkenhead.
Jane Davis says:
‘I wanted to get books into the hands of people like myself who needed them, so I set up Get Into Reading to bring books and people together.
People began to tell me: “This isn’t just reading, this is good for my health, you should be getting paid by the NHS”.’
Ten years later and The Reader Organisation works 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. Each week the charity delivers over 300 groups across the UK, from Glasgow to London, reaching over 1300 people aged 3 to 103.
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.
A group member from Liverpool said:
‘Get Into Reading has given me the confidence to move on to a better place.’
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. You can read the list and vote for your favourite at www.thereader.org.uk from Monday 3rd September.
The Reader Organisation is a charitable social enterprise based in Merseyside that works to connect people with great literature and each other. During 2012 it developed the Big Lottery Volunteer Reader Scheme on Merseyside, created the new Everton Family Project, and extended its engagement with services across Wirral. Nationally, it has been named as one of Britain’s New Radicals by NESTA and The Observer.
Get Into Reading is a pioneering Merseyside – based reading project which began in Birkenhead in 2002. The Reader Organisation now delivers over 330 reading groups across the UK, 200 of which are based in Merseyside. Groups meet to read together in a variety of places, including: hospitals, care homes, prisons, GP surgeries, libraries, prisons, supermarkets, homeless shelters, community centres, corporate board rooms, probation centres, schools and mental health day centres.
