Building empathy for a better world
Miranda McKearney OBE, founder of The Reading Agency and EmpathyLab, talks about this year’s Empathy Day, which took place on 9 June. Founded in 2014 EmpathyLab aims to build understanding through stories. And while this year saw a very different celebration for Empathy Day amid a national lockdown and global demonstrations in support of the Black Lives Matters movement, the message is the same.
E
mpathy Day (which this year took place on 9 June) is a platform to emphasise the
importance of empathy in our divided world, and raise awareness of the power of reading to help us understand each other better. The annual day is organised by all of us at EmpathyLab, a newish non- profit organisation.
New approaches to building the core life skill of empathy are badly needed with the recent dramatic rise in hate crimes. Helping children learn about empathy through books lays strong foundations for building a more caring world, and resisting prejudice.
A better world
This year Empathy Day took place amid a national lockdown and global demonstrations in support of the Black Lives Matters movement. It sparked a huge response, trending on Twitter’s Top Ten for seven hours. Heartfelt contributions from across the UK highlighted that the act of imagining ourselves in someone else’s lockdown shoes has sparked a flourishing of community connection and kindness. We mustn’t let that fade; empathy is a crucial foundation for a better society, a society that values everyone equally. Empathy is a vital tool in the fight against racism, a driver for radical social change, with change urgently needed, because empathy is so often in short
supply, as evidenced agonisingly by George Floyd’s death, and here at home by the rise in hate crimes, which rose 10 per cent last year. In our Empathy Conversation event, author Muhammad Khan said: “Once the pandemic is under control, we must continue to support all communities with the same kindness and compassion; we must continue listening to them. The empathy we develop from reading will ensure the important messages learnt are never forgotten. “When we read about a character from a different culture or gender or ability than our own, we learn the skill of perspective taking, and understand how our lives are all interconnected.”
Learning EmpathyLab’s strategy is based on research showing firstly, that empathy can be learnt – we’re not born with a fixed quantity, and 98 per cent of us can improve this skill at any point in our lives. Secondly, that in books we have at our fingertips the perfect empathy building tool. Neuroscientists and psychologists are showing that the emotions we feel for fictional characters wires our brains to have the same sort of sensitivity towards real people.
What would a world with more empathy look like? Empathy is a powerful human force. It helps families understand each other better, and school children treat each other with respect and warmth. It results in
Miranda McKearney OBE (@MirandaMcK) is founder of The Reading Agency.
more humane government policies. More empathy would mean happier children, stronger communities, a more civil society, a better world. We have a fantastic army of empathy partners and supporters from our pilot schools, publishers, authors and illustrators, public libraries, prisons and youth organisations all working with us to achieve our mission. Leading authors and illustrators wonderfully stepped up to spearhead 2020’s new, online Empathy Day. From Joseph Coelho leading Empathy Charades, to Malorie Blackman putting on her Empathy Glasses. You can watch these and more on the EmpathyLab YouTube channel.
Empathy collection Since 2017, we have produced an annual Read for Empathy collection featuring a diverse selection of books for primary and secondary children, all carefully chosen by an expert panel to improve children’s empathy skills. The 2020 Read for Empathy Guides for parents and teachers features 33 books for four to 11-year-olds and seventeen books for 11 to 16-year- olds. Some illuminate the experience of people from a range of cultures or life circumstances. Others help children explore emotions, so they can understand how other people feel. Several reflect stories of our
Spring-Summer 2020
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