Reading changes lives
Genevieve Clarke Genevieve Clarke, Programme Manager at The Reading Agency, on how their work brings together the themes of this year's conference.
It seemed like a dream - a conference combining literacy, health and workplaces as topics, all of which we deal with on a daily basis at
The Reading Agency . We're an independent charity, nearly eleven years old, with a
mission to give everyone an equal chance in life by helping people become confident and enthusiastic readers - because everything changes when we read.
We've been working in the field of adult literacy since the start, encouraging our key national partners, the public library service, to link with local learning providers. The aim has been to weave creative reading activity, expertise and resources of libraries into the delivery of literacy provision whether formal or informal. This is based on our experience of observing that once engaged in an enjoyment of reading, learners are keen to continue, thus improving their skills in the process.
Six Book Challenge Our focus in recent years has been on a very practical scheme, the
Six Book Challenge, which provides a flexible
framework to get adults at every level of literacy to develop a new reading habit. And it works! At least 35,000 people registered for the Challenge in 2013 - through public libraries, adult and community learning, colleges, prisons and workplaces. Ninety per cent of those surveyed said they felt more confident about reading after taking part.
This brings me on to the second focus of the conference - workplaces. There's been a huge push to improve the literacy skills of the nation's workforce over the last decade under the current and previous governments. Trade union learning has played an especially important part and we've been working with unionlearn, the TUC's learning arm, and with the Campaign for Learning's Learning at Work Day (now a Week) to promote reading for pleasure in workplaces. Trade unions such as Usdaw, CWU, UNISON and Unite see the Six Book Challenge as an excellent way to engage people in a conversation about learning opportunities for themselves and for their families. Staff at McVitie's factory outside Manchester have worked with Stockport Library Service to make sure there's a wide selection of books on offer to challenge participants. Train drivers in Liverpool and Manchester have been trying out the scheme. And UNISON is encouraging its members in local councils in the East Midlands to get reading.
Now an increasing number of NHS Trust libraries are catching on to the idea of using the Six Book Challenge to draw support staff into using their collections. Staff at the Birmingham & Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust were recently treated to a visit from
Six Book Challenge ambassador and bestselling author Martina Cole to
promote the scheme. They've been able to extend it to some of their service users, especially in the eating disorders unit. The University Hospitals in Birmingham are also running the Challenge and the City Hospital, location for this RaPAL conference, is showing interest.
Meanwhile Greater Glasgow & Clyde NHS Trust are into their third year of the Six Book Challenge, this time running it across ten sites. In 2013 they ran it across five hospitals and two outlying sites with 168 people taking part, including laundry and night shift workers, with 96% of participants completing the scheme. All of those surveyed said that they'd recommend it to their colleagues. Managers remarked upon a positive impact on staff that do not have English as their first language and also saw the Challenge as a way for staff to enhance their reading and writing skills.
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