Get Into Reading Showcase

Manchester

Bringing about a Reading Revolution...

 Get Into Reading trainee facilitators at Burton Manor, with Director of The Reader Organisation, Jane Davis
(right, front) and below, trainees in the grounds of Burton Manor, the home of our accredited training course
 Contents

Contents

Introduction 2

What is Get Into Reading? 3

Case Study: Helen‟s story 4

Conference Speakers 5

The Speeches

Blake Morrison „The Reading Cure‟ 7

Louis Appleby „How Reading is Good for Your Mental Health‟ 12

Get Into Reading: Salford 17

Read to Lead Training 18

Contact Us 20

Books enable us “better to enjoy life,

or better to endure it”
Samuel Johnson -1- Contents
 Introduction

Introduction

The Get Into Reading Showcase was held in the Reception Rooms in Manchester Town
Hall on Tuesday 21st October 2008. Three partner organisations – The Reader
Organisation, Time to Read and Arts About Manchester – collaborated, with support
from the National Year of Reading 2008 and Arts Council England, to deliver a high-
profile one-day conference to promote the Get Into Reading creative reading project.

The event highlighted the work of Get Into Reading in Merseyside and Salford, to gain
further knowledge and understanding of the project and to explore the potential for further
development of this initiative across Greater Manchester.

The Conference Aims were:

To showcase the work of established Get Into Reading initiatives in Merseyside and
Salford;
To raise awareness and demonstrate the benefits of Get Into Reading for health and
social care providers;
To demonstrate the benefits of multi-agency partnerships for libraries; how Get Into
Reading groups bring „value-added‟ work to libraries and other organisations;
To establish links between library managers, other statutory bodies, health and social
care professionals and other relevant parties, e.g. voluntary sector and arts outreach
workers, in order to develop the Get Into Reading project;
To secure support from interested parties and commissioners to support the launch
of a Get Into Reading initiative within Greater Manchester.

The conference was aimed at:

Senior Library Managers

Senior PCT Commissioners
Senior Health Service Practitioners
Strategic Health Service Managers
Senior Health Charity Managers
Strategic Arts and Cultural Officers

“Get Into Reading is exactly the kind of work the NHS

should be developing in the next ten years”
Professor Louis Appleby -2- Introduction
 Get Into Reading

What is Get Into Reading?

The Reader Organisation‟s pioneering social outreach project Get Into Reading currently
delivers over 120 regular community reading groups, reaching more than 600 people each
week across the North West. Groups meet in community centres, libraries, homeless
shelters, schools, hospitals, drug rehab units and care homes to enjoy great books and
poems together.

“It‟s like another door has opened and the light has come in.”
Get Into Reading member, Wirral

What‟s different about these groups is that short stories, novels and poems are read aloud
by one of our trained facilitators – members can choose to join in, but there‟s no pressure
to. This provides immediate engagement with the text, which is enriched by the
spontaneous sharing of life stories and experiences as confidence builds over time. The
groups meet week-in-week-out, providing valuable structure and support. Both of these
elements are integral to the success of Get Into Reading.

“It‟s like massage for the mind”

Carer, Burnley Central Library Get Into Reading
-3-
 Case Study

Case Study: Helen’s story

Helen is in her thirties and when she first her husband to Sorrento. They travelled by
arrived at the Get Into Reading group she plane – something she wouldn‟t have been
was visibly shaking, couldn‟t make eye able to contemplate a year ago.
contact with anyone and couldn‟t talk to
Before joining her GIR group, Helen hadn‟t
the other people in the group. If anything
read for three or four years because of
even remotely connected with the idea of
concentration problems. She says the fact
death came up in whatever text they were
that the group was local – in her
reading, she had to leave the room.
immediate community – helped, and also
Nevertheless, she continued to attend,
that the group was small. She liked the
rarely missing a session and it was clear
quiet, gentle atmosphere and the fact that
that she valued the group highly.
there was absolutely no pressure to join in
Helen eventually revealed that attending – it immediately felt therapeutic. As she
the Get Into Reading group was actually puts it: “The group gives you maximum
the first thing she‟d been able to come out pleasure – in both the people and the book
to independently for 18 months, since the you‟re reading – with minimum stress.
death of her mother. Before her mother‟s
death, she had suffered with depression for
several years and had eventually had a
major breakdown. She was given
medication and several courses of therapy,
lasting 16 months in total, but feels that
she only really began to improve when she
joined her Get Into Reading group. This
was a safe haven, where she was allowed
to remain quiet for as long as she liked, but
gradually, over the course of a year, she
began to join in, improving to the point
where she was eventually able to join in a
50-strong Get Into Reading members‟
coach trip to Manchester Royal Exchange “The knowledge that you don‟t have to do
to see Pete Postlethwaite in The Tempest. anything is very important, but then trust
Her rising confidence levels also allowed begins to build and you‟re able to share
her to take on a few hours‟ voluntary work personal feelings with the group, so that
at a local Oxfam shop. they end up knowing more about you than
friends you‟ve known for years. You can
Helen is now about to return to say what you want and you know they‟ll
employment, after six years of being unable understand.”
to work. She has just been on holiday with

“You can say what you want and you know

they‟ll understand”
Helen -4- Case Study
 Conference Speakers

Conference Speakers

Professor Louis Appleby

NHS Director for Mental Health and Professor of Psychiatry, University of Manchester

Professor Louis Appleby has played a central role in plans to reform mental health services
as part of the Government‟s NHS Plan, bringing in a range of new services including home
treatment, early intervention and assertive outreach teams, and mental health legislation.
He has led numerous initiatives looking at reducing suicides and improving the physical
environment of mental health wards. Since 1996 he has been Professor of Psychiatry at the
University of Manchester and since 1991 a consultant psychiatrist in Manchester. He was
awarded a CBE for services to medicine in the 2006 New Year Honours.

Jane Davis
Founder and Director, The Reader Organisation

Dr Jane Davis left school at 16 with 2 O-Levels and became a single mother at 18 before
returning to education in her twenties. In 1997, after several years teaching literature
courses in the University of Liverpool‟s Continuing Education department, she founded The
Reader magazine. The magazine has grown organically into The Reader Organisation, a
charity which aims to bring about a Reading Revolution. She works enthusiastically
to develop new projects and to build on the success of „Get Into Reading‟ Merseyside,
engaging and inspiring Primary Care Trusts, libraries, Mental Health trusts, the Criminal
Justice service, Social Care services and other local authorities across the country to create
infrastructures for the project. She holds on tight to her vision to make the serious pleasure
of literature available, in many different ways, to as many people as possible.

Jane Mathieson
Regional Reader Development Co-ordinator, Northwest

Jane Mathieson co-ordinates a regional partnership of reader development practitioners

working in public libraries across NW England. The partnership, called „Time To Read‟,
exists specifically to share information and good practice in developing the audience for
reading across the region. „Time To Read‟ develops promotions with the aim of encouraging
people to read more and borrow more from public libraries. It works to improve the skills
of library staff and brokers reading partnerships. Jane has worked with The Reader
Organisation for a number of years, particularly on the Liverpool Reads project, and until
recently was on the Board of Trustees.

“The reading group mends holes in the net you

would otherwise fall through”
GIR member, Birkenhead -5- Conference Speakers
 Conference Speakers

Tom McDonald
Former Director of Joint Commissioning (PCT) & Deputy Director of Community, Health
and Social Care, Salford

Sarah Spence
Libraries and Information Service Manager, Salford

Blake Morrison
Author, journalist and bibliotherapy advocate

Blake Morrison is a poet, novelist and journalist, best known for his two memoirs And When
Did You Last See Your Father? and Things my Mother Never Told Me. Born in Yorkshire, he now
lives in London, where he writes regularly for the Guardian and is Professor of Creative
Writing at Goldsmiths College. He is Chair of The Reader Organisation‟s Board of Trustees.

Ivan Wadeson
Chief Executive, Arts About Manchester

Arts About Manchester is the audience development agency for Greater Manchester,
working with nearly fifty arts organisations to develop audiences for the arts by delivering
marketing services, research and strategic and collaborative projects. Ivan‟s role focuses on
business planning and strategic development of the organisation and the team; partnership
development; management of relations with funders and key stakeholders; and advocacy and
representation. Ivan had worked extensively in theatres and arts centres – including
Liverpool Playhouse, Sadler's Wells (London) and the Royal Exchange Theatre (Manchester)
– before taking his current role at Arts About Manchester in 2003. He is on the Boards of
the Everyman and Playhouse theatres in Liverpool, and Network, the national network of
audience development agencies.

Honor Wilson-Fletcher
Director, 2008 National Year of Reading

Following a degree in English and History at Goldsmiths College, Honor Wilson-Fletcher

worked with a succession of booksellers and publishers in a variety of roles – as bookseller
at both Books Etc and Waterstone‟s, as Head of PR at Waterstone‟s, Associate Publisher at
Transworld, Sales and Marketing Director at Hodder Children‟s Books and in both sales and
marketing roles at Penguin. She also had a stint online with BOL.com, before joining the
British Museum as Head of Marketing. Prior to joining the National Year of Reading she was
Director of Marketing at the Southbank Centre working on the re-launch of Royal Festival
Hall and the reinvigoration of the whole Southbank Centre site.

“Get Into Reading‟s like going on holiday

without packing your bags”
Full-time Carer -6- Conference Speakers

The Speeches
We have transcribed two keynote speeches from the Get Into Reading Showcase event
so that those who were unable to attend the event can get a sense of the dialogue and to
gain some useful insight into the world of reading and health. If you were fortunate
enough to attend, then here‟s a chance to refresh your memories and be re-inspired!
Blake Morrison: The Reading Cure
When we talk about the reading cure we
have to be realistic: we can‟t cure
everything. There are some illnesses, some
viruses, that no amount of reading can ever
heal. I make that point because I like to be
above the idea that The Reading Cure and
„bibliotherapy‟ are somehow alternative
and new-age: that‟s not how I see it. I‟m
the son of two GPs in the north of
England; both of them are hard-headed
pragmatists who believe, and so do I, in the
advances of modern medicine – penicillin,
antibiotics, stem cell research, everything.
But the body is not law unto itself, it‟s not
entirely distinct from the mind.
We know that some physical ailments are
linked to the mind and we know that
people‟s ability to cope with illness is often
connected to their sense of who they are
and where they‟re at. We know that
isolation, depression and a lack of self-
esteem can be crippling and disabling. By
contrast, confidence, a sense of belonging
and the ability to express oneself are
positive attributes that can be good for
one‟s sense of wellbeing and health. That‟s
where I feel that books have a part to play.
I don‟t mean anything so crude as the
transformation overnight from a sick
“It‟s relaxed you can be yourself. You can just sit
there and be yourself”
GIR member, Wallasey -7-
The Speeches
person into a healthy one, but something
more gradual, more complex, where a
person‟s emotional, physical and
psychological development and progress
are linked by their immersion in books and
reading they engage with and the people
around them.
When I came up to see Jane Davis‟s work
last year and wrote „The Reading Cure‟
article in the Guardian, which she probably
doesn‟t thank me for really(!), I talked to a
variety of people, and one of them,
somebody who works with Jane, Kate
McDonnell, said to me, “Reading pushes
the pain away to a place where it no longer
seems important. No matter how ill you
are there‟s a world inside books which you
can enter and explore, and where you
focus on something other than your own
problems. You get to talk about things that
people usually skate over like ageing or
death and that kind of conversation with
everyone chipping in, so you feel part of
something, something that can be
enormously helpful.”
Other members of Get Into Reading
groups that I spoke to said: “I‟ve stopped
seeing the doctor since I came here”, “I‟ve
The Speeches

cut down on medication”; a lady who had
breast cancer said, “Being in a group of
other women who have what I have didn‟t
help me but talking about books made a
huge difference”; and then someone else
said, “The reading group mends holes in
the net you would otherwise fall through.”
They‟re all I think interesting insights into
what books, what reading can do.
Raymond Tallis, professor of Geriatric
Medicine at the University of Manchester,
whom I also talked to about the
therapeutic benefits of such reading
groups, was a bit doubtful about some of
the research that‟s been done in the field
of arts as therapy but did tell me about an
old colleague of his who had been
enormously helped in his last weeks of life,
when he was hooked up to a diamorphine
pump, by reading War and Peace as he lay
there. On how reading could be
therapeutic, Tallis said that reading
provides “the pleasure of escape into a
parallel world, the sense of control one has
as a reader, and the ability to distance
“The reading group becomes an occasion for saying
things that are perhaps difficult in a normal social
discourse.” -8-
Blake Morrison
oneself from one‟s own circumstances by
seeing them from the outside, suffered by
someone else and gathered up into a nicely
worked-out plot”. Somewhere in there
you sense a notion of the Aristotelian
catharsis, the cure. So, I think there is
evidence here of things happening.
D. H. Lawrence, after writing Sons and
Lovers, said, “One sheds one sicknesses in
books” and that reading “repeats and
presents again one‟s emotions to be
master of them”. Shedding your sicknesses
in books leads me to think of Ted Hughes,
who talked about how poetry – poetry in
particular because that was important for
him – could be an exploration of things we
don‟t actually want to say but desperately
need to share. So the reading group
becomes an occasion for saying things that
are perhaps difficult in a normal social
discourse. In his last years, Ted Hughes
became quite convinced about poetry as
therapy, defining poetry as “nothing more
than a facility for expressing that
complicated process in which we locate
and attempt to heal a fiction, whether our
own, or that of others whose spiels we can
share; in other words, the inmost spirit of
poetry is at the bottom in every recorded
case, the voice of pain, and the physical
body so to speak of poetry is the
treatment by which the poet tries to
reconcile that pain with the world”.
I used to be a bit sceptical about the idea
of writing books as therapy, about
„creating‟ as therapy. You could say that
creating is different from sitting around
reading a book, couldn‟t you? But I think
Blake Morrison

the two processes are very similar in many
ways. I think Proust – I confess to not
having read the whole of Proust but I did
notice something – once described the
book as “a sort of optical instrument the
writer offers to the reader to enable the
latter to discover in himself what he would
not have found but for the aid of the
book”.
The book becomes a sort of optical
instrument, or it‟s a mirror in which we
see our own reflection or something that‟s
going on in our own lives; or it‟s the
process that the schoolteacher in Alan
Bennett‟s The History Boys talks about when
he says how, in the presence of great
literature or poetry, “it‟s as if a hand has
come out and taken yours”.
If you‟re feeling quite isolated in what
you‟re experiencing and have been thinking
about, you can suddenly realise somebody
else has thought and felt this and they‟ve
expressed it in poetry or prose, and you
feel somehow affirmed in your sense of the
world and yourself. I think we locate
ourselves in the work of others in that way
and that active reading is not unlike writing
in some ways: it certainly can be
therapeutic. I‟m talking about self-help
through literature. I am sceptical about
overtly „self-help‟ books. I‟m sure they have
a part to play but one of the things I like
about the Get Into Reading scheme is the
sense that we‟re dealing with classics,
we‟re dealing with serious works of
literature, these aren‟t just feel-good
books, they‟re not full of psycho-babble,
“I think we locate ourselves in the work
of others”
-9-
Blake Morrison
they‟re not pamphlets, they‟re not medical
textbooks: they are novels and poems.
Often these great pieces of literature are
dealing with very difficult and painful
experiences, which I can see is a challenge
to those of us, say, dealing with people
who are in pain, whether it‟s mental or
physical, and are perhaps anxious about
exposing such people to pain capacities in
literature. But my sense of it is that it can
be liberating, it can even be upbeat to
confront really difficult emotions and pain:
it doesn‟t lower the experience to see it
being worked out where it can raise them.
It‟s what Thomas Hardy said, “If a way to
the better there be it exacts a full look at
the worst”, and I think he‟s right about
that. Even people who perhaps haven‟t
experienced extreme despair and
depression first-hand will recognise it as a
result of reading what other people go
through; books become a kind of empathy,
they become a way for us to connect with
other people with other people‟s
experiences.
It‟s said that reading works as therapy, that
at one level it‟s a way of echoing, a way of
finding in a book an echo of your own
Blake Morrison

experience: you feel recognised, you feel
vindicated, you feel validated but also
sometimes it takes you to places that you
haven‟t expected to go, places you perhaps
didn‟t even particularly want to go but you
feel grateful for having visited them. And I
do think that real works of literature,
without being snooty, the classics, works
of literature that stood the test of time,
have a serious purpose to them: they have
a shape, they are the crucial way for this
reading cure to work rather than overtly
„self-help‟ books. So you find a sort of
order and shape there in the poem, or in a
brilliant passage in a novel, which provides
that order you shore up against in the
disorder, the chaos and confusion in your
own life.
The reading cure works, I think, both as a
group, communal experience and as a
private one. That‟s to say there‟s no doubt
“The reading cure works both as a group, communal
experience and as a private one”
- 10 -
Blake Morrison
the experience of sitting around a table
with other people discussing a book, that
the communal solidarity that gives, the
sense of engagement with others, sharing
things, is absolutely crucial.
But I‟d like to think that there‟s something
else too; that people go away, that they
withdraw but they take that experience
with them; that they read at home as well
and if they‟re not reading at home very
much at least they‟re thinking about the
issues that have come up. In other words,
it‟s social but there‟s also withdrawal into a
private place, a bit like a religious retreat if
you like. You‟re taken out of the world
when you‟re reading and when taken out
the world you lose track of time and space.
Yet when you‟re taken out of yourself in
that way – like when you missed that stop
on the bus or the train because you were
immersed in a book – where you‟re taken
out of yourself like that, you‟re also being
taken inside yourself: you‟re going
somewhere deep inside yourself as well,
and that‟s what books can do, both take
you out of, and inside, yourself.
~~~
In The Prelude Wordsworth talks about
how there are „spots of time‟ in our lives,
which are scattered somewhere in our
memory and which when we read or when
we reflect we recover, like recovering
buried memories. By doing that, through
that act of recovery, we are in his terms
renovating and repairing. He says:
Blake Morrison

There are in our existence spots of time,
That with distinct pre-eminence retain
A renovating virtue, whence–depressed
By false opinion and contentious thought,
Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight,
In trivial occupations, and the round
Of ordinary intercourse–our minds
Are nourished and invisibly repaired;
A virtue, by which pleasure is enhanced,
That penetrates, enables us to mount,
When high, more high, and lifts us up when
fallen.
In reading poetry you recover these „spots
of time‟ in your memory and you feel
renovated, you are lifted up from
somewhere fallen. It‟s interesting that
words about being renovated are also used
by John Cross, the young man who used to
sit reading Dante with George Eliot after
her husband had died, which helped her
through her grief. John Cross, who
subsequently married George Eliot, said
about this experience: “Her sympathetic
life in stimulating my newly awakened
enthusiasm for Dante is something to
distract her mind from sorrowful
memories. The divine poet took us to a
“Reading poetry you recover these „spots of time‟ in
your memory”
- 11 -
Blake Morrison
new world: it was a renovation of life.” A
renovation.
So my feeling is, there is The Writing
Cure, there is The Reading Cure and I
think what Jane‟s doing in trying to get
great books out there to the whole nation
is immensely valuable. I think that too
often literature can be annexed as the
property of teachers and lecturers: they‟re
to do with school syllabuses; they‟re to do
with university programmes, degree
programmes. But the best literature is
about life and the stuff that we experience
and that you go through, and I think that
the emphasis of Get Into Reading is for
people to make connections with their
own lives: to look at books as books, to
respond to them, judge them, decide
whether they‟re good or not, but
constantly to make connection with their
own experiences, and that seems to me to
be a healthy way, the healthiest way to
approach books.
I‟m all for The Reading Cure.
Blake Morrison

Professor Louis Appleby: How Reading is Good for Your Mental Health
What is the connection here? you might be
asking. What is the connection between
reading and mental health? Why is it I am
here to draw up the link between the
work of Get Into Reading and my job,
which is forming national Mental Health
policy? By assumption that not everyone
here is a mental health professional, let me
just take you back a little bit to what‟s
happened in mental health services in the
last ten years.
Ten years ago when we began the process
of reform on the NHS, and mental health
care in particular, there was a very
pressing problem that community care was
seen to have failed. It had lost public
confidence. It had lost political confidence.
A very eminent politician had said,
“Community care is a failed policy.” That
“You need something more than just tablets – that‟s
only a crutch”
Mental health service user
Louis Appleby
was a damning comment to make about
what had been a twenty year period of de-
institutionalisation. So at the time when I
moved into the Department of Health, the
policy became to try and restore
community care, to try and make people
feel it was the right policy, the humane
policy, for people with severe mental
illness and in particular for adults of
working age.
We set out to reshape the policy and we
did that by developing specialised services:
first of all an intensive community team,
which would support people who had
complex health and social care needs,
people who didn‟t easily accept what the
service traditionally had to offer, so would
drift out of care and become vulnerable
and become high risk. We were also
concerned about young people getting ill
for the first time and it would take a long
time to have their first contact with
services, by which time they‟d be more ill,
more in need of admission and more in
need of heavier treatment; we were
concerned to provide an alternative to
admission for people when there was a
safe alternative. We spent a lot of time
strengthening community care.
It‟s my job to create the policy content but
you realise when you work in government
policy that you‟re very dependent on the
people outside doing their job. People
need to pick up national policy and turn it
into something real for mental health
service users.
- 12 - Louis Appleby
 Louis Appleby

So the success of the last ten years has

primarily been theirs – because of the
success of the people working on front line
services. Two weeks ago the World
Health Organisation produced a report
that said British mental health services
were the model to follow across Europe.
Last week, the Healthcare Commission,
the independent watchdog for healthcare
in England, produced its annual report on
the NHS. There was a lot of reporting
about what was going wrong with it, none
of the reporting, as far as I could see,
mentioned the key point that mental health
services was far outstripping other parts of
the NHS on quality of care. So something
has really changed. You couldn‟t say those
things ten to fifteen years ago. Something
has really changed about mental health
services.
have mental health needs. And people of
But where does that leave us? the margins of society, people who
Well, much of what I‟ve described is about traditionally mental health care has been
specialised services for people with severe about: people who are offenders, people
mental illness, and you reach a point where who are in prison, coming out of prison,
having done that, your policy emphasis has young people who have been in care,
to reflect that. It has to be about the people who are marginalised by society,
mental health needs of the community as a asylum seekers, refugees; the kind of
whole – about people‟s emotional health as people who don‟t usually get very good
well as their mental illness, about press. Those are the people whose mental
emotional well-being. So the policy switch health needs we will now reach out to.
of the last year or so – and this will That means not just treatment, it means
become more apparent in the next five or prevention and it means mental health
ten years – the policy switch has been the promotion. So the thrust of mental health
broader community. Not just adults of policy will be much more addressing the
working age, but children and older mental health needs of people who are not
people; not just people who are in mentally ill but who are emotionally in
specialist services, but people who are need. I‟m talking about people who have
outside the remit of specialist care but lost confidence, people who have lost self-
who still have mental health needs. We all

“It‟s been great this – a real boost”

Client at drugs detox unit - 13 - Louis Appleby

esteem, not necessarily depressed, people
who have lost family, people who have lost
friends, and people who are lonely and
isolated. It‟s a major challenge for society
to support the people who are lonely.
We‟re going to talk a lot about loneliness
in society. Loneliness is a major challenge
to modern society where movement
around the country is fragmented, within
cities and so on. There are positive things
as well: there are people who are positive
about what they can achieve, who are
optimistic and who still have mental health
needs, who still need to address their own
mental health needs if they‟re to fulfil their
potential. That‟s much more of what you‟ll
now see from the mental health policy.
But what in practice does this mean? What
do we mean when we talk about
prevention and promotion and how does
reading fit into mental health promotion
and prevention?
“That means not just treatment, it means prevention
and it means promotion”
- 14 -
Louis Appleby
I should say I‟ve noticed a few of the things
you‟ve already said: The first way in which
that promotion and prevention agenda can
be turned into something practical is
through schools, through the workplace,
where we talk to children about emotional
literacy, not just conventional literacy.
Schools nowadays are starting to do a
much better job of this than five years ago.
It‟s much more part of what schools see as
responsible – it‟s not just about preventing
bullying or support, it‟s also about giving
people the language of emotions through
which they can understand themselves and
others. It‟s about what the government
would call social exclusion – helping people
into training, helping people into jobs,
helping them defeat the stigma of
discrimination that people with mental
health needs, not just with severe mental
illness, encounter in their day to day lives.
There was a very important report
published in 2004 by a social exclusion
group which was about social exclusion
and mental health; important because it
was the first cross-government report that
had focused on mental health – a significant
moment. It was helping people into training
and helping people fulfil their potential in
literacy was a key part of it.
So how can reading be good for your
mental health? How does it fit in directly
to this agenda?
I think there are three ways: first of all
there is a direct impact of reading on us as
individuals, on our emotional health and on
our social health. It may be an obvious
thing to say but combating depression,
combating low mood, is partly about
Louis Appleby

addressing what‟s enjoyable. You might
think that everybody would know that but
it has taken years of research, careful
research, to demonstrate that a model of
depression, human depression, which is a
kind of vicious circle, whereby people‟s
emotions when they are low will prevent
them from doing things that will lift them
out of feeling low. That‟s the vicious circle.
So, an obvious example, if you‟re feeling
low about something, any of us feeling low,
and a friend rings up asking you to go out,
you can feel “I can‟t quite be bothered”,
and it‟s that decision, influenced by your
mood, which maintains your lower mood.
Now, therefore, there is a whole world of
therapy built on the idea of reversing that
vicious circle, and the key importance
therefore is doing something which you get
an immediate lift out of. Not because it‟s
transforming in itself, but because it‟s the
first step towards helping people out of the
vicious circle. So, you can see the point
here, if you can get enjoyment out of
reading, then that is an important factor of
maintaining mood and maintaining our
capability.
There is also a direct impact of simply
understanding. Reading presents to us the
themes of life: books are about jealousy
and regret and resentment and revenge.
Revenge is what Wuthering Heights is all
about, isn‟t it? These themes are
mentioned in Shakespeare – that‟s what his
plays were about, they were about these
things and they‟re powerful because we
identify with them. We identify with the
people in these stories and we learn about
them, of course, but we also learn about
“It‟s something normal – you can join in without having
to talk about mental health problems”
Mental health service user - 15 -
Louis Appleby
ourselves. That emotional language, that
emotional literacy of understanding comes
from observing other people, whether it‟s
in fiction or in life. So there are characters
who are like us and characters who are
not like us. Every adolescent reads The
Catcher in the Rye and learns about Holden
Caulfield. I remember reading The Catcher
in the Rye at university and thinking I really
didn‟t like Caulfield at all. I was expecting a
great moment of identification with this
adolescent crisis but I really didn‟t like him
at all. It was actually quite helpful not to
like him because I thought, “I hope I don‟t
come across like that at times.” So we can
learn from characters who we like,
characters who we don‟t like, characters
who we are like and characters who we
are not like. We learn a lot about
ourselves.
We also learn about achievement. Reading
can be an achievement. Of course I‟m
partly talking about people whose
education or social environment hasn‟t
given them the opportunities for reading
that maybe some people have had. But it‟s
not just that. I‟m looking forward to the
moment when I finally have time to read
War and Peace – I know that when I read it
I will feel really proud of myself and it‟ll be
a great achievement. It doesn‟t matter if I
like it or not, it will be a great achievement
because I‟ve been looking forward to it for
so long. Certainly there is a sense of
achievement, and coming back to what I
was saying about understanding human
emotion and human mood, we know that
achieving something is another way of
getting a lift, of reversing that vicious circle.
Louis Appleby

I said it‟s good for our individual health but
it‟s also good for our social health. I
suppose this is why I think a project like
this has an edge on just reading because
there is a social dimension. If you go to
libraries, they play a similar role. There is a
social side to it, to talking to people. I
remember when the BBC did that
campaign about the hundred best books. I
thought that was very interesting, very
good because people began to talk, all
sorts of people began to talk about books
that they enjoyed. I discovered people
liked books that I liked, who I hadn‟t
otherwise had any other contact with.
People who I was reading about, people
who I happened to meet. It was a social
dimension to shared experience, shared
enjoyment, which can‟t be underestimated.
Families know this, all families know this.
Growing up in a family where parents read
to their children, there is a social
dimension there, a bond, a shared
experience there, which is good for our
emotional health. It‟s not about treating
depression, it‟s about remaining
emotionally healthy. I still read to my nine
year old son, I think I do it more for my
“We learn a lot about ourselves. Reading can
be an achievement”
- 16 -
Louis Appleby
sake, not for his; he sort of sighs tolerantly
when I get the book. It‟s because it is a
tremendous bonding experience. I know
when I stop there‟s going to be a moment
of tremendous loss, the moment when he
actually says, “You know what, I‟d actually
like to read for myself tonight,” I just know
that‟s going to be an emotional moment.
There is also a social inclusion element.
Reading is a skill. It leads us onto other
skills. It is a step on the way to training,
onto work, in a way that many people
need help with. I‟m not particularly talking
about severe mental illness but it‟s
impossible not to refer to mental illness
when we talk about skills, helping people
back into mainstream society. There are
people who have suffered severe mental
illness, who need that help back into
training, into jobs, just to do part of what
the rest of us take for granted and any step
on the way is the right step for them.
There are many people who are troubled
and failing in education and anything that
helps them back into educational
achievement is right for them. So there‟s a
direct impact and there‟s the lower impact
on schools. Thirdly, there‟s something a
reading project can bring and that is, it can
bring the values of society to people. Then
there are the values of opportunity,
fulfilling potential, of providing support, and
a sense of community – one person for
another. Those are the right values for a
modern society. So I see Get Into Reading
as very important as it does all those
things.
Louis Appleby
 Get Into Reading: Salford
Get Into Reading: Salford

Public Library Services in NW England support a large and growing number of reading
groups in libraries and communities and are very keen to further develop groups which
have a health benefit for people who need it most. A number of library authorities have
already taken steps to support the Get Into Reading model. A clear example of this is
Salford Library Service.

Get Into Reading in Salford utilises the existing skills and resources of the library service and
other services within the Community Health and Social Care Directorate, in partnership
with The Reader Organisation and Salford Primary Care Trust. The project is an excellent
way to support the health improvement agenda. It was established as Salford Libraries‟ key
project for the National Year of Reading 2008.

Groups are delivered at a variety of venues across the city:

A residential care home

An arts centre for people with mental health
problems
A day centre
A community library
A homeless shelter

The library service leads the project with two dedicated days per week from Reader
Development Officer Sarah Coyne and by providing resources to support the groups.
Groups are facilitated by Sarah and Amanda Brown, a member of The Reader Organisation.

We are in a situation where everything is done for us, we get out of the habit of
thinking. This group presents us with the opportunity to think for ourselves, stirs
up the old grey matter!
Care home resident

The challenge now is to develop the project by encouraging more staff working within day
care centres, elderly person‟s homes, libraries and other organisations to become actively
involved in the facilitation of Get Into Reading groups.

Many other library authorities in the region and nationally are keen to follow this exemplary
model. There are advanced discussions and plans in progress in a number of NW
authorities, with others trying out different models of health-related reading activity.
Nationally, training and delivery models are being discussed and piloted.

“There‟s much more to a reading group than

just reading a book”
GIR member, Salford - 17 - Get Into Reading: Salford
 Read to Lead

Read to Lead Training

The Reader Organisation delivers specialist Read to Lead training throughout the
country for those with a desire to spread the pleasure and power of reading through the
Get Into Reading model. Courses are open to people from all professional and social
backgrounds: a love of books, a belief in the social value of reading, and a passion to
share this vision are our main criteria.

It was a privilege to attend a course that feels like it could truly change the way I
work ... and to learn from the dedicated, enthusiastic members of The Reader
Organisation.
Trainee

Read to Lead Workshop

Want to know more about Get Into Reading (GIR)? This workshop offers the opportunity
to take part in an intensive reading experience as part of a GIR group, observe the
principles of our work in action and learn about specialised reading and group facilitation
techniques. You will meet people from your part of the country who are interested in GIR
and be able to discuss strategies for developing GIR in your area. (Cost: £150)

It was a joy and a privilege to be there. I think it's such a wonderful thing you're
doing – on so many levels. Very many thanks for an inspiring day.

Workshop attendee

Read to Lead Residential

This residential course is intended for people who want to become accredited Get Into
Reading facilitators. Over a fun but intensive five days this course will give you the insider
view on what makes GIR work.

The enthusiasm of all involved – staff, group members and fellow students –
gives one the energy and optimism to get going; the stimulus is both spiritual and
intellectual.

Course attendee

GIR facilitators and reading group members will put you through a vigorous reading
workout, help you identify areas of practice to work on, and give you the opportunity to
lead a reading group in a companionable and supportive environment. This course provides
all the experience necessary to run a GIR project. (Cost: £1,000)

“Immensely good and nourishing”

Read to Lead trainee - 18 - Read to Lead
 Read to Lead

Read to Lead Non-Residential

This training course is intended for people who want to become accredited Get Into
Reading (GIR) facilitators, but whose schedules do not allow for them to attend the Read to
Lead Residential.

Brilliant and varied. The course’s flexibility was really great and the rests in between
allowed me fully to absorb the information.

The course is delivered over six day-long sessions, scheduled over a course of time that
suits your timetable. In addition to four core sessions:

Introductory Workshop
Read Aloud with Confidence
Facilitation Skills in Depth
Choosing Reading Materials

your group will be able to choose specific workshops relevant to nature of the GIR project
you wish to develop.

Cost: £800 (minimum 8 trainees; maximum 12 trainees)

Read to Lead Consultancy

Through the Read to Lead training programme, The Reader Organisation offers tailor-made
consultancy in developing Get Into Reading and other aspects of our expertise throughout
the country. Please contact Casi Dylan, Training Manager, on the details below to talk over
the best way to make your workplace, service, or team part of the GIR community.

Reading in Practice MA

The Reader Organisation is involved in the delivery and development of an MA degree in

Reading in Practice at the University of Liverpool. The MA is concerned with the wider and
deeper ways in which books „find‟ people, emotionally and imaginatively, by offering living
models and visions of human troubles and human possibilities. The first MA of its kind, it
invites open-minded investigation into the role of reading in relation to health – in the
broadest sense of that word. The MA, costing approximately £2000, is taught part time (in
two-hour seminars on Thursday evenings) over two years.

“The small decisions a writer‟s made, that‟s where

thoughts can be found: the author‟s and our own”
Current MA student - 19 - Read to Lead
 Contact Us

The Reader Organisation

The Reader Organisation exists to bring about a Reading Revolution, extending the hand of supportive shared reading,
and offering access to books for all. Our work encourages people of all ages and backgrounds, in whatever life situation
they find themselves, to become readers, or to extend their reading habits, and to share the reading experience.

If you would like to explore working in partnership with us, offer us funding or support, or help champion our cause,
please contact Jen Tomkins, Communications Manager on 0151 794 3849, email jentomkins@thereader.org.uk, or pick
up a pen and write: 19 Abercromby Square, Liverpool, L69 7ZG.

www.thereader.org.uk

Arts About Manchester

As the audience development agency for Greater Manchester, Arts About Manchester supports arts and cultural
organisations in building and sustaining their audiences. We are a membership organisation who acts as a central point
of contact for the local arts community as well as an important research and intelligence resource. Our expertise in
audience development and arts marketing also means that we work with non-members at both regional and national
level.

We‟d be happy to hear from you at any of the following contact points: Telephone – 0161 234 2955; Email -
intray@aam.org.uk; Fax – 0161 234 2966; Postal Address – Arts About Manchester, Green Fish Resource Centre, 46-
50 Oldham Street, Manchester, M4 1LE

www.aam.org.uk

Time To Read
Time To Read has existed as a formal reader development network since 1997 and has supported a full-time co-
ordinator since October 2002. The post is hosted by Manchester City Council and core funding comes from
subscriptions from NW library authorities. Focus is on working with adults, but also addresses areas of overlapping
work with young people and families. Time To Read has an agreed strategy for reader development activity called
Readers For Life. This was recently renewed and takes work forward to 2011.

Through its Readers For Life Strategy, Time To Read is concerned with many aspects of public library service delivery:

Promoting reading services to potential users

Encouraging wide reading through promotions and use of reading-related websites
Bringing readers together in groups and at events, to counter social isolation
Supporting libraries‟ work with emergent readers

The work of Get Into Reading clearly fulfils Time To Read‟s strategy in these areas. Librarians across the NW are well
aware of the achievements and impact of Get Into Reading, and are striving in many places to establish and maintain
Get Into Reading Groups for the benefit of local communities and individuals.

www.time-to-read.co.uk

“It moves you, I mean it hits you inside where it meets you
and means something”
Dementia sufferer on reading poetry - 20 - Contact Us

GIR member, Liverpool

“In the presence of books, it's as if a hand
has reached out and taken our own. That's
the hand The Reader Organisation is trying
to extend.” The Guardian