Call: 020 7278 8922

Email: info@readingagency.org.uk

Post: The Reading Agency
PO Box 96
St. Albans
AL1 3WP

If you have a specific enquiry about one of our projects then you will find the project manager’s email in the Resources section of the relevant project page.

If you have an enquiry about ordering resources email Shop.

Whichever way you choose to get in touch we look forward to hearing from you.

The Reading Agency was formed in 2002 by merging three smaller agencies - LaunchPad, The Reading Partnership and Well Worth Reading. We were a bunch of activists with a common passion for libraries and reading.

We’ve come a long way in our five years and disproved all those that told us that most mergers fail. We’ve established ourselves as a respected and viable reading development agency and are involved in some exciting stuff.

We run a potent, magical mixture of big national partnership schemes, library reading promotions, projects that target specific readers and run our own research and publishing programme. Our initial staff base of two full-time people has multiplied by 800 per cent! Our virtual office is now a physical one. We think we have achieved a lot in our five short years.

“It’s hard to believe The Reading Agency is already five – it seems to have been around for so much longer. It has huge ambition, enthusiasm and energy for reading and libraries. Happy birthday to The Reading Agency.” Tony Durcan, President, Society of Chief Librarians.

We are not stopping here though. Once we’ve eaten lots of birthday cake we are going to be pressing on with delivering the National Year of Reading 2008 with the National Literacy Trust on behalf of the Department for Children, Schools and Families. We’ve also got plans for strengthening our partnerships, exciting new work with children and young people and a brand new publications programme.

Without wishing to seem impatient – we are looking forward to celebrating our tenth birthday…

Our role is to mobilise the power of libraries and to bring our experience of forging partnerships between libraries and creative partners like the BBC and publishers to make the National Year of Reading 2008 fabulous. To find out more about what we can offer libraries in the 2008 National Year of Reading, download The Reading Agency Offer document from Resources.

Every library authority in England has committed to the National Year of Reading and are planning events and activities to promote reading in all its forms. A key aspect of the National Year of Reading has been the library membership campaign to get more people joining their local library. At the moment, the number of new library members that have joined since April 2008 is 1,076,055.

And the National Year of Reading has recently won the Bookseller's award for Expanding the Market.

But we can't rest on our laurels. The campaign target is to get 350,000 new people joining their library.

We've produced special welcome packs for new members which tell them about all the new reading activities that libraries are running. These packs are available from libraries and the National Year of Reading website - the link is in Resources.

We want the impact of the National Year of Reading to remain long after the official 'year' has ended have thought about how its legacy could fit in with key local and national government initiatives. You can read about the legacies we believe the National Year of Reading will leave and our suggestions for how libraries can campaign to ensure that they happen in the powerpoint presentations available from Resources.

We are really delighted to be leading this venture with The National Literacy Trust. The other organisations in the consortium are:

Arts Council England
Booktrust
The Campaign for Learning
The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education
ContinYou
The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council
The National Youth Agency
NIACE
Society of Chief Librarians
Volunteer Reading Help

We will continue to post updates and information about how libraries can get involved in the National Year of Reading 2008 on these pages so keep checking back.

We welcome people into our workforce who are enthusiastic, creative and have a passion for reading and the written word - in all its marvellous forms. We regularly post vacancies on this website for both staff and consultants with a wide range of skills from technical IT to creative project management skills.

If there are no vacancies advertised at the moment, then please check back soon

If you want to be one of the first to find out when we have a vacancy then please sign up for our e-mail job alerts.

Equal opportunities and diversity

We are committed to equal opportunities in all aspects of our work. We are committed to ensuring that no contractor, job applicant or employee is discriminated against on the grounds of race, colour, age, gender or gender re-assignment, nationality or ethnic origin, sexual orientation, parental status, political or religious beliefs, disability, marital status or trade union membership.

Please help us to make sure that we are meeting these commitments by filling out our equal opportunities form. We ask everyone who applies for a job as well as those who work for us to do this. Thank you for your help.

Chair: Martin Molloy, Director of Libraries & Heritage, Derbyshire County Council and President of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP)
Vice Chair: Viv Griffiths, retired Acting Director, Leisure and Culture, Birmingham City Council
Honor Wilson-Fletcher, Project Director for the National Year of Reading 2008
Nicolette Jones, Freelance Journalist and children's book specialist
Janene Cox - Assistant Director - Culture and Libraries, Children and Lifelong Learning Directorate
Nicky Parker, Head of Library & Information Services, Manchester
Malorie Blackman, Author
Martin Wright

The Management Team

Chief Executive: Miranda McKearney
Director of Resources and Strategic Operations: Penny Shapland
Director of Programmes: Elizabeth Dubber
Director of Finance: Maureen McCulloch

Our work is undertaken by a network of skilled project workers and support staff. Some are employed by the organisation and others work on a freelance basis. The project managers responsible for each project are listed on the relevant project page so please get in touch with them if you would like any more information about our work.

You can also Contact us. We'd be very pleased to hear from you.

Arts Council England provides our revenue funding.

We’ve also had particularly significant support from MLA, CILIP, Department for Children, Schools and Families (Skills for Life Unit), Department for Industry, Universities and Skills, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, the Big Lottery Fund and the Reading Partners’ publishers.

If you’re an organisation with an interest in reading

We’re interested in sharing ideas, audiences and action. We can help bring different partners together, and we can unlock the power and reach of the public library network and its millions of readers.

If you run a library service

We’re a national organisation that works with library staff every day. Use our ideas, use our reading programmes, use us as a voice to get your message across to local and national government. Take advantage of our co-ordination skills and our ability to put you in touch with potential partners like publishers.

If you run a business

Getting involved with reading can yield major sponsorship and CSR benefits, and build employees’ skills and communication. We’ve run reading based programmes with Orange, Ford, ASDA, Unilever, Marks & Spencer, American Express and others . Do Contact us.

If you’re a reader

Look out for the things we help make happen, often in libraries or online. Got children? Try the Summer Reading Challenge and Chatterbooks reading groups. A teenager? Try HeadSpace teenage reading spaces. An adult who’s just getting into reading? You’ll find books to enjoy as you build your reading stamina at www.firstchoice.org.uk.. Just wondering what to read next? Look out for our reading promotions at a library near you.

National reading programmes for target audiences
Partnerships
Resources to promote reading
Research and new thinking

National reading programmes for target audiences

We run national reading programmes that help open up the world of reading to key audiences. These have developed from innovative pilots to big programmes shared across the UK, mostly through the library network.

At the moment our work in this area encompasses:
Adult literacy
Young people
Children
Families in prison

Adult literacy
The Vital Link

We run partnerships, book promotions, training and online resources to support libraries and professionals working with adults trying to improve their literacy skills and get into reading. The programme encompasses a new Six Book Challenge and a partnership with Quick Reads.

This is an ambitious area of work and one which we are particularly proud of. The Vital Link, run by The Reading Agency in partnership with the National Literacy Trust, is one of the national programmes funded through Framework for the Future. But we also receive support from the Skills for Life Strategy Unit in the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills for our work with adult literacy practitioners.

Young people
Fulfilling Their Potential

Through Fulfilling their Potential we encourage 11 to 19 year-olds to get involved with their local library and have a say. We have already run some very successful pioneering projects which have engaged young people with their local libraries in the north west, Yorkshire and Humberside and the south west. Currently we are doing some extremely exciting work with young people through HeadSpace, a radically new library space shaped by young people, and a new website devised and designed by young people interested in the written word.

At the heart of Fulfilling their Potential is our partnerships. We have a range of positive partnerships which include the National Youth Agency, Association of Senior Children’s and Education Librarians (ASCEL), Museums Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), Society of Chief Librarians (SCL) and the Regional Youth Work Units in the north west and Yorkshire and Humberside.

Children
The Summer Reading Challenge and Chatterbooks

We believe that it is essential for primary school children to be engaged with reading. Reading is arguably more important than any of the other skills they are taught at this time as it opens up the rest of the curriculum to them.

The Summer Reading Challenge is our largest national programme. Every year the number of children and libraries doing the Summer Reading Challenge has grown and more children are going back to school fired up by the wonderful worlds that reading books can open up to them.

While Chatterbooks, which we run in partnership with Orange, is smaller but also achieving great things by getting children reading books – and talking about them.

Families in prison
The Big Book Share

We’ve been doing some very important work (we believe) with prison services to promote family reading and help prisoners to stay involved and engaged with their children. Funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, the Big Book Share supports prisoners to select books and then record themselves reading their chosen titles. This is having some very positive benefits on the education of children with parents in prison.

Some of these programmes are funded by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) to support the government’s strategy for modernising public libraries, Framework for the Future.

Partnerships

We broker and then run partnerships to make magical things happen for readers. Lots of these are between the library network and organisations wanting to reach readers through libraries. They inject skills, resources and sparkle into libraries’ offer to local readers.

We have some very exciting creative partnerships at present:

BBC Learning – working with their literacy campaign RaW and environment campaign Breathing Places
BBC Radio
Booked Up
Booktrust Teenage Prize
The Costa Book Awards
Creative Partnerships
Orange
Reading Partners
Channel 4’s Richard & Judy Book Club
World Book Day

Resources to promote reading

We create tailor made reading promotions to help professionals working with readers reach and inspire them better. Lots of them are linked to our partnerships and national programmes. We can provide support through our Shop, our project managers and training. At present we are offering the following reading promotions:

For adults
Breathing Places
Discover Nature
Five Minutes
Got kids? Get reading!
Six Book Challenge

For children
Chatterbooks
Summer Reading Challenge

For young people
New website

We have on line databases to help with stock promotion and development, and planning author events and promotions with publishers. You’ll find links to these at www.firstchohoicebooks.org.uk and Events calendar.

We offer support through training, sometimes face to face, sometimes online. At the moment we are running face to face training around Chatterbooks and online training for librarians working with children and young people at www.theirreadingfutures.org.uk.

Research and new thinking

This is a developing area for us. We carry out research into reading and organise discussion events so that we can find out about reading and how it is developing. We then publish our findings.

We are excited by this area of work. It allows us to pull together all the rich first-hand information we have from the projects and partnerships we run with readers. We then use this to contribute to debates about reading. We use it to demonstrate how important reading is and the wonderful difference it can make to people’s lives. Our research is also incredibly valuable when we are planning our own projects.

You can read more in New thinking.

We try new things out, like reading groups with a radio strand, or a new website to attract teenage readers.

We’re used as a resource by people working directly with readers. We can provide training and advice as well as toolkits, websites and promotional materials.

We use our connections to join up organisations interested in promoting reading. For example, we help libraries form partnerships with major organisations like publishers and the BBC.

We have a research and events programme which leads to new evidence and thinking about the impact of reading. We’re also active in public policy and advocacy, working with government departments and think tanks. And we’re experienced at working with the corporate sector, through sponsorship or Corporate Social Responsibility programmes.

If you would like to work with us then we’d be delighted to hear from you – contact us.

If you want to know why we do the things we do see Our approach.

Why? Because we believe that reading can transform people’s lives. The more you read, the more you know. The more you read, the more you imagine. The more you read, the better you understand other people, and the better you connect to them.

We’ve got ideas and the energy to make great things happen. We’ll work with anybody who wants to get more people reading more. Much of our work is with public libraries, but we also team up with prisons, publishers, unions, businesses, broadcasters, and others.

“What stands out is The Reading Agency’s passion for reading and readers.” Kate Mosse, bestselling author