Our approach

While our work is increasingly integrated there are four overarching themes that connect all our programmes and partnerships. These go to the heart of our strategy.

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.