As The Reading Agency celebrates its fifth birthday, Director Miranda McKearney looks back on achievements so far and shares future plans.
This autumn The Reading Agency (TRA) celebrates five years of inspiring more people to read more.
Those five years have seen TRA become a force for change. With libraries, we’ve established innovative national reading programmes and partnerships which are making a real difference to readers. This could only have been possible through a deep partnership with the library sector.
How it all began
TRA was founded as an independent charity in 2002 by merging three smaller agencies. We were a bunch of activists given brave early backing by the Arts Council and CILIP, and have since had support from lots of others including MLA (Museums, Libraries & Archives Council) and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation.
Our founder members were Debbie Hicks, Anne Sarrag and myself, and our people came from very different worlds – publishing, literature development, marketing, universities, arts administration, libraries. But we all had in common a passion for libraries and reading and a determination to disprove those who warned us that most mergers fail.
Our passion has been shared by our fantastic board. Martin Molloy has been its Chair throughout, and we’ve drawn on the sound advice of librarians like Viv Griffiths, Sue Hawker and Nicky Parker, journalists like Nicolette Jones and marketing experts like Honor Wilson-Fletcher. This group has just been joined by author Malorie Blackman and the BBC’s Tony Phillips, and we’re really looking forward to their involvement.
We’ve come a long way in five years. We’ve established ourselves as a respected and viable reading development agency. We’ve grown hugely, from two part-time employees to 18 staff members. What started out as a virtual organisation has now become a physical one, too, with a small office in Bloomsbury.
Early successes
From the very beginning, the combination of national partnerships steered by TRA and local delivery by libraries has proved a potent mix. An example of this was The Big Read, launched by the BBC just after we came into being. We had a nightmarish time-
scale – three months – to mobilise libraries, but were able to get every library authority in the UK involved. We’re still reaping the rewards of working with the BBC.
Our collaboration with Orange has also worked well. We’ve helped libraries become pivotal partners in the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction. By 2007, 1,811 libraries were involved, and the prize’s finalists saw loans of their books rise by 350 per cent.
Orange Chatterbooks started as a pilot in three trailblazing authorities and is now a hugely popular network of reading groups, involving 6,000 children in 160 authorities. Evaluation shows it widens the range of children’s reading, and boosts their reading confidence and enjoyment.
We’ve acted as a connector to libraries for numerous other agencies.
Teaming up with the Richard & Judy show, for instance, made sure that libraries hooked into the phenomenal popularity of Channel 4’s Bookclub, with resulting rises in book issues. And we’ve built a trailblazing new partnership with the world of publishing through the Reading Partners scheme, which involves nine major British publishers.
During the last three years, it’s been exciting to see this scheme transforming the way adult publishers and libraries work together. At this year’s PLA (Public Library Authorities) conference, Joanna Prior from Penguin spoke about the change in publishers’ perceptions.
She said: ‘We didn’t really give the sector much attention. Enter The Reading Agency, who suggested a manageable navigation model that allowed us to make sense of the library service. Reading Partners was born and gave publishers a way to talk to you all at once, and get a response. We’ve come to understand just how much libraries can help to bring authors and their readers together. This bridges a gap for us that has opened up in recent years in retail.’
This means that publishers are increasingly prepared to send their big-name authors to libraries, run regional promotions, and be part of skills-sharing programmes. We’ve just, for instance, done a Nick Hornby tour with Manchester, Norfolk, Leeds and Dorset libraries which reached hundreds of teenagers who don’t normally read much or use libraries.
Starting with children
As we were establishing ourselves, it was clear that the Summer Reading Challenge (SRC) was going to be alchemical: we were able to combine libraries’ good work into a massive national success story.
The SRC is now the largest UK children’s reading promotion and a highlight of many families’ summer holidays. Last year it reached 650,000 children and inspired them to read some three million books. Recent research shows that children taking part read more books, read more widely, enjoy reading and recognise authors better than children who don’t take part.1
‘It was the first time ever that he’d picked up a book on his own and read it,’ said Londoner Gill Bowles about her seven-year-old son Ralph, who completed the SRC for the first time this year. ‘They tell you it will happen eventually, but this was a real milestone moment for us.’
Getting young people hooked on books has been a priority over TRA’s first five years, and we’ve worked hard to reach neglected groups.
We teamed up with the National Youth Agency on the YouthBOOX scheme to get socially excluded teenagers back into reading. With Ascel (Association of Senior Children’s & Education Librarians), SCL (Society of Chief Librarians) and MLA we have developed a major change programme for teenage services called Fulfilling their Potential (FtP).
The Big Lottery-funded HeadSpace project is the creative ‘front end’ of FtP: we are working with 20 local authorities to put young people centre-stage in creating protype vibrant new library services.
As teenager Sameeha Patel, a volunteer with HeadSpace Bolton, says, ‘We’ll be there in the library for when a teenager comes in. We will be talking to them about books that we think they will really like. HeadSpace is going to make a difference’.
Phoebe Hill, from HeadSpace Dorset in Lyme Regis, adds: ‘It’s not a space that the adults have made – it’s for us by us. You walk in and it’s obvious that it’s our space.’
TRA is proud of The Big Book Share, a scheme to help parents in 21 prisons contribute to their children’s reading development by recording books on tape, started as a pilot in Nottingham. ‘My kids love to read the books I send to them and it helps them read a lot better than before,’ said one prisoner at HMP Nottingham.
And we’re equally proud of the growing impact of the Vital Link programme for adults trying to improve their literacy skills. Today, 80 per cent of library authorities are signed up to using the scheme’s approach. Research by Morris Hargreaves MacIntyre found that 75 per cent of basic-skills learners involved in this reading-for-pleasure work through libraries show improved literacy skills.
These and other national schemes are all underpinned by our research programme. Early on we made our mark with Reading the Situation, a 2001 survey of the nation’s reading habits. We’ve continued to try to find the funding (not always easy) to help the sector prove the impact it makes through supporting reading. A summary of ours, and others’, research can be found in the Love Libraries Toolkit.2
Learning the lessons
Things that started as experiments – the Summer Reading Challenge, Reading Partners and Orange Chatterbooks – have now established themselves as major building blocks of libraries’ reading services. But of course it hasn’t all been plain sailing. We’ve had to learn the value of putting readers right at the heart of our planning, and to involve the library sector every step of the way.
We’ve tried to make sure we are a ‘bottom-up’ rather than ‘top-down’ organisation, building consultation into everything we do, something that’s not always easy when things move so fast nationally.
We try to get the right balance between encouragement and exhortation, and probably get it wrong sometimes!
We are still worried that libraries do not always appreciate the role they can play in developing a reading nation, and are diversifying to such an extent that their core reading business is being swamped.
We’d argue that the market opportunity is there for libraries to position themselves as the community hub for reading – social, lively, relevant. And we believe, if they choose to prioritise this core business, and build on the green shoots of the reader development movement, they could crack their political visibility.
Planning for the future
What will the next five years bring? In the short term the 2008 National Year of Reading will give everything TRA does added impetus. We will be working with the National Literacy Trust to deliver the Year, on behalf of the Department for Children, Schools & Families. It’s a crucial opportunity for libraries to develop their profile for their work with readers, and we’ll be working with everyone to make the most of the platform it offers.
It has already been embraced by publishers who, thanks to Reading Partners, have committed themselves to an ambitious schedule of library events that includes pairing 149 authors with 149 authorities.
Looking further ahead, TRA will carry on working with the SCL and MLA to spread the impact of the national reading programmes. Learning from how the Summer Reading Challenge has made a difference, we’re introducing two new creative drivers. First is the Six Book Challenge, a new initiative to get adult-literacy learners reading for pleasure as part of the Vital Link programme; 114 authorities have already signed up, and that we have secured support from the Costa Book Awards. Second is a dynamic, new online social network to give teenagers the chance to share their passions for reading and writing. It will be launched in March 2008.
We will be strengthening our partnerships with creative and learning organisations. We hope to work with children’s publishers to launch a junior version of the adult Reading Partners scheme, and from 2009 we hope to have moved into new premises as part of the new Freeword consortium – a powerful group of literature and free-expression organisations.
We hope to build on our strategy discussions and funding with the Department for Innovation, Universities & Skills and the Department for Children, Schools & Families. We have just received new Curriculum Division funding to build library partnerships with schools.
TRA’s next five years will see an increased focus on evidence and new thinking.
We will use research to spark debate on the future of reading and libraries, and we’ll be launching a new series of publications to capture and disseminate this.
We’ll have lots more events to give people the space to explore issues – a conference with the LGA (Local Government Association) on 30 November, for example, explores how reading work can be used as a basis for community engagement.
Our new research with Harper Collins into reaching black and minority ethnic (BME) readers will be launched at a joint conference with the Bookseller, to be chaired by Rageh Omaar on 22 November. Check our website for details.3
We will have an increasing emphasis on social justice, stepping up our efforts to reach socially excluded audiences by building on projects like the Big Book Share and HeadSpace, and targeting National Year of Reading priority audiences such as reluctant male readers, looked-after children and BME groups.
Libraries are perfectly placed to ensure everyone has equal access to the joy and power of reading. We will use our energy and talents to help achieve that in any way we can.
References
1 New Review of Children’s Literature and Librarianship, Vol.13, No. 1, April 2007.
2 http://www.lovelibraries.co.uk/Making-it-happen/research.php
3 www.readingagency.org.uk
Miranda McKearney is a Director of The Reading Agency.
Updated: 27 November 2007