Thank you to all people who have written, emailed or called us in response to either the Blake Morrison article in the Guardian (5th Jan 08. Read it here) or to the article on Woman’s Hour (Tuesday 29th Jan 08. Listen to it here)

Incredible response 

Your responses clearly indicate that there is a huge potential take-up of the Get Into Reading idea. We intend to coordinate a conference bringing hundreds of people together for a networking/shared creative thinking event - and we’re aiming for sometime in 2008. First though, we have to find someone to help to fund such an event. If you can help with that please contact us here.

We have heard from people from all over the UK, from Greenock to Belfast, Snowdonia to Hull, Cornwall to Durham. And we’ve had correspondence from Ireland, France, Italy, Germany, Denmark and the United States.

Keeping in touch 

We have replied to everyone - but if we’ve somehow missed you in the deluge please do contact us again here and we promise to get back to you.

We are creating a database of all contacts and will keep in touch unless you tell us to stop.

If you haven’t yet contacted us but are going to do so, please give us some details as we are trying to put locations and interest groups together. So let us know:

Want to join a Get Into Reading group? 

If you are looking to join a Get Into Reading group please be patient: we are trying to organise the setting up of some regional activity - but it will take time. We’ll get back to you.

Training 

Many people have asked for training and demand is far-outstripping our current capacity to supply. This is the plan: we have set aside a series of dates for introductory training sessions. These will take place on Merseyside and in different parts of the UK. We will have to charge for these introductory open days until we find funding to supply them free of charge. The price will be £150 + VAT.

Each session will offer one place free of charge - if you are an individual who cannot afford to pay, let us know, and we will see  what we can do.

The introductory training day will offer an opportunity to:

Places on each one day course will be strictly limited to 12. You must pay in advance, and we can’t offer any refunds. The sessions will not run if less than 8 people sign up. Please sign up as soon as possible. The dates are as follows: 

Wednesday 12th March 10:00 - 16:00 Liverpool - venue and further details to be confirmed
Wednesday 16th April 10:00 - 16:00 Manchester  - venue and further details to be confirmed
Friday 9th May 10:00 - 16:00 London - venue and details to be confirmed
Saturday 31st May 10:00 - 16:00 Liverpool - venue and details to be confirmed

To book a place, please contact us here or ring 0151 794 2830

 

Are Books the New Prozac?

Liked The Reading Cure by Blake Morrison? Subscribe to The Reader magazine here and support our work.

If you have just read Blake Morrison’s Guardian article (Review section, Saturday 5 January) on bibliotherapy and have come here for more information, you will find the heart and ethos of the project in The Reader magazine, founded by Jane Davis and Sarah Coley ten years ago. The Reader magazine is an ideal way to keep in touch with or find out more about the Get Into Reading project, and taking out a subscription to the magazine helps to support our work. Subscribe here.


Get Into Reading project workers also write regularly here on the Reader blog.

We are looking to develop Get Into Reading in other areas of the country and have developed a training and support programme, Read To Lead, for potential group facilitators. We will tailor a development programme to particular local circumstances, but generally speaking we like to work in partnership with a Library service, a local Primary Care Trust and one or more voluntary or other agencies. To discuss project development, contact us here.

Would you like to make a donation to support our work? Contact Jane Davis here.

GIRTY Fundraising Event

The latest GIRTY (Get Into Reading TodaY) Fundraising Event is to be held on Friday 25th January 2008 from 7.30pm – 12am at Bromborough British Union, Legion Lane, Bromborough, Wirral. Why not come along and support the work of Get Into Reading by meeting with members of different GIR groups from across Merseyside.

Tickets are now available priced at £10 each. Entertainment and Buffet are all inclusive in the ticket price. To get tickets, contact your group facilitator, or Carol Munns via Bebington Library on 0151 643 7219.

 

People's Choice Debate: Victory for Jane Davis

Jane Davis, Director of The Reader Organisation has been victorious in her 'Vote for Books' campaign as part of the People's Choice debate for BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival 07. Beating off competition from three other Liverpool-based thinkers, covering diverse topics such as 'In praise of activists' and 'Britain needs to take an anger management course', Jane's winning pitch to promote books as the art form that "allows us to fully understand the human experience", is headway indeed for The Reader Organisation's work.

Very many congratulations, Jane!

Rockferry Library Christmas Party

 

All readers are welcome to Wirral Libraries’ Christmas party, held this year at Rockferry Library on Wednesday, December 5th from 6.30-9.00pm.The provisional programme is as follows:

 

6.30-7.00pm: Welcome, wine and mingle

7.00-7.15pm: Official welcome from Sue Powell (Head of Services) and special guest, Mike McCartney (Cultural Ambassador for Wirral)

7.15-8.00pm: Discussion groups for Favourite Book of the Year

8.00-8.30pm: Refreshments and quizzes

8.30-8.45pm: Talk and readings from special guest, Hilary Green

8.45-9.00pm: Answers and prizes

Tickets, priced at £3.00 each, will be available from the beginning of November at all Wirral libraries. All welcome!

Get Into Reading Parties!

We all had a wonderful day courtesy of Suzanne and staff at Ridgeway Library, Noctorum in September to celebrate GIR’s achievements over the past year and to introduce members to each other. With a buffet lunch and a reading by Frank Cottrell Boyce of O’Connor’s short story ‘First Confession’, as well as poetry reading and news updates from our MC, Jane Davis, a great time was had by all. Many thanks to GIRTY and all who helped on the day; the readers thoroughly enjoyed it. The poetry anthologies received by them were also very much appreciated…

gir day FCB gir day

certificate gir day book gir day

New Faces

Get Into Reading would like to welcome three new members of staff to the project. Wendy Kay has started working with reading groups in Sefton, Liverpool and Wirral (gads!), while Clare Williams is juggling a Phd as well as working on both The Reader and Get Into Reading. Samantha Shipman (Sam), a Scarborough lass, will be based on Wirral, reading with young people and children. A warm welcome to you all from Get Into Reading!

Flint Street Nativity Event!

As the season of good cheer (and more Christmas Carolling than you know what to do with) approaches, 50 Get Into Reading members will be enjoying a Christmas matinee of Tim Firth’s funny and (bah, humbug) heart-warming drama at the Liverpool Playhouse in December. It’s a play about a class of seven year olds’ production of the greatest story ever told (no, not ‘A Christmas Carol’…do keep up!) and the inevitable disasters that come with the territory. With a local cast and in the worst possible taste. It promises to be wonderful. Watch this space for our readers’ post-performance views…

 

New Groups

Get Into Reading would like to announce two new groups recently set up on Wirral:

Bebington’s ‘Make Friends With a Book’ group is on at Bebington Central Library and is on Tuesdays, 2.00-3.30pm

Leasowe Library’s ‘Book at Breakfast’ offers tea n’ toast as well as reading and is also on Tuesdays, 10.30-12.00pm

Please contact Kate Mc Donnell for further details: 07973 247707

Get Into Reading commended by local readers and by NHS Director for Mental Health
 

Jane Davis, Director of The Reader Organisation, which runs Get Into Reading, met recently with Professor Louis Appleby, the NHS National Director for Mental Health. Jane talked to Professor Appleby about the increased self-confidence and generally improved well-being reported by many GIR group members.

“Get Into Reading is exactly the kind of work we at the Department of Health want to develop over the next ten years - facing outward into the wider community and looking after the mental health and well-being of the general population - which may include people who have recognised mental health problems as well as people who simply want to feel happier,” said Professor Appleby.

The Get Into Reading team are currently looking into ways to increase delivery on Merseyside, where there are now over 40 groups meeting - in community centres, libraries, care homes, day centres and at our own HQ at The Lauries, Birkenhead - each week.

'Joining Get Into Reading is the best thing I've done,' one of our reading group members told us recently. Other readers tell us the groups are calming, relaxing and therapeutic.

If you are interested in commissioning Get Into Reading's services or Read to Lead training, please contact Jane Davis through our 'contact us' page.

Free Skills for Life - Confidence Course!

Starting on Thursday 20th September, there will be a Skills for Life – Confidence Course at Woodchurch Library. It will run for six weeks and is absolutely free! So if you’re interested and want to increase your ability to stand up for yourself, say what you mean and be more confident in unfamiliar situations, please contact Gwen at Woodchurch Library on 677 8068, from 31st August onwards.

 

National Year of Reading announced

The government has announced that 2008 will be a National Year of Reading, with an emphasis on bringing reading for pleasure to as many people as possible, encouraging families to read together, and tackling the problems of poor literacy currently endemic among British children and adults. We hope that the very successful Get Into Reading model will increasingly be taken up across the UK as part of this strategy. Jane Davis, director of Get Into Reading, commented:

The power of the story or poem is not just for children. Our Get Into Reading project is offering a model, which I hope will be taken up nationally, of inclusive and intense reading experiences for people of all ages, abilities and educational backgrounds. Read-aloud reading groups can help create community.


New issue of the GIRTY Grapevine now available!

The latest issue of the GIRTY Grapevine, the newsletter for Get Into Reading members, is now available to download from the GIRTY page.

 

Two new Get Into Reading groups

There are two new groups starting:

For over-55s, at Pensall House, Fairview Way, Pensby, on Tuesdays, 11-12.30; and

The Book at Breakfast, West Kirby Library, The Concourse, West Kirby, Fridays, 9.30-10.45 (tea and toast served! Open to everyone)

For more info, contact Kate on 07973 247707.

 

Get Into Reading in the news

Get Into Reading has been featured in a number of publications in recent weeks. An article about the project by volunteer programme coordinator Julie Barkway appears in the current issue of The Public Library Journal (a national journal for librarians) and Julie has already had some enquiries about the project from other library services on the back of this. Meanwhile a double-page feature about Get Into Reading appeared in The Big Issue in the North (26 February to 4 March edition). Forthcoming features include a piece by Julie about the Riverside group, to be published in Learning Disabilities Practice, a monthly journal, and one by Katie Peters about the Redhomes group, to be published in Signpost, an NHS magazine focusing on dementia.

 

New MA in 'Reading in Practice'

Working alongside Get Into Reading's groundbreaking practice, the School of English at the University of Liverpool has developed a new (two-year, part-time) MA which investigates the relationship between reading and health (in the widest sense of that term). For more information, you can download the course brochure here.