Jane’s vision, to create a world where everyone has the opportunity to develop a love of reading and to share their experiences, has seen her build up a charity which now employs 60 staff members, across the UK, and offers a lifeline for hundreds of people, simply by reading aloud together.

On receiving the award, Jane said:

“It’s great to be seen as a radical; it’s so easy to take books and reading for granted. Reading aloud is an experience in its own right, bringing people together through sharing deep experiences. Since my teaching days, I’ve worked to take books to where they are not always found, bringing people together in care homes, prisons, hospitals, schools, libraries, community centres, supermarkets and corporate board rooms. ”

So, what next? She’d like to see the successful Get Into Reading model adopted as standard practice in the NHS, care homes and libraries, enabling them to do more to meet social and individual needs for the twenty-first century.

Our team of interns entered Jane for the competition, run by NESTA and The Observer, by creating a video to showcase her ethos, leadership, and delicious cooking, which you can watch here:

To find out more about Jane, why not visit her blog, follow her on Twitter, or read her essay explaining how The Reading Revolution came into being in Stop What You’re Doing and Read This!

Niall, Zoe, Mark Thomas from the Liverpool Post and Donna from WECC celebrate The Reader Organisation's Social Enterprise Mark award

Gaining the Social Enterprise Mark shows the world that our work is driven by an aim to positively impact people and the communities in which they live in on a day-to-day basis. Get Into Reading is continuously making that strong  and noticeable social benefit felt across Merseyside, providing group members with outcomes such as increased general positivity about life, a better understanding of those around them and enhanced social interaction – recent evalution showed that 95% of people enjoyed having the opportunity to meet people they wouldn’t usually meet in day-to-day life by attending a weekly reading group.

We were joined in our headquarters at West Everton Community Council to celebrate receiving the prestigious award by Mark Thomas, Editor of The Liverpool Post, and Donna Ellison, a WECC volunteer. Being officially recognised as a Social Enterprise will allow us to increase our activity in the local community, connecting more people with reading and meaningful social activity.

Zoe Gilling, The Reader Organisation’s Business Manager said:

“We’re really proud to have been awarded the Social Enterprise Mark. It’s really important to us that we are able to generate trading income to reinvest directly into the local communities where Get into Reading began, is growing, and is needed most.”

The Reader Organisation joins other ethical businesses that have been recognised by being awarded the Mark such as Age UK, Blackburne House and the Big Issue.

Lucy Findlay, Managing Director of the Social Enterprise Mark Company said:

“We are delighted to award the prestigious Social Enterprise Mark to The Reader Organisation. Social enterprises come in all shapes and forms so it’s great to see vital, local charities understanding the importance of being part of the wider social enterprise movement.”

There was some very strong competition and it’s still a great honour for us to be nominated alongside some wonderful organisations; our shortlisting will provide a brilliant boost of recognition for the project which has gone from strength to strength in the past four years and is one of our most successful partnerships.

Eleanor McCann, Reader-in-Residence at Mersey Care, was at the awards and reported back to us about the evening:

The full list of winners is available on The Guardian’s website. Congratulations to all winners and runners-up.

Running since 1971 (when they were known as the Whitbread Literary Awards), the Costa Book Awards are one of the biggest and most prestigious literary prizes in the UK, recognising a range of the most widely enjoyable books of the year by writers based in the UK and Ireland. The awards are also unique for being the only literary prize which places an equal emphasis on children’s books alongside adult literature.

The Unforgotten Coat has been nominated in the Children’s Book category. The accolade tops off what has been an amazing year for Our Read, with 50,000 copies of the book captivating hundreds of thousands of children (and adults) across the UK – and beyond (we’ve received postcards from Our Read readers as far afield as Spain, Argentina, Australia, Bulgaria and Hong Kong). The Our Read launch day took a special reading train from Liverpool to London and back (with Frank himself on board) and since then, there’s been tons of other events centered around The Unforgotten Coat. We’d like to offer our congratulations to Frank for this honour and thank him for ‘giving’ the book to Our Read – we couldn’t have done it without him.

The category winners will be announced on 4th January 2012. For more information on the awards, visit the Costa Book Awards website.

Although Jane and I were shortlisted, we did not win in the Against All Odds category at the Morgan Foundation Entrepreneur Award ceremony last Thursday night. However we did all have a good night out! You’ve seen the girls all glammed up there (I wouldn’t like to say who the most glamorous was as I’d land myself in a world of bother), so I’ll just say, they all looked a million dollars and the boys were looking a bit dapper too.

We ate lamb, drank champers and learnt a lot about some other great charities and social enterprises in the area. It was a good experience for the people around the table and to be honest the woman who won in our category had been through so much, it would have been a crying shame if she hadn’t won it. Our table gave her a standing ovation.

All I can say is: Morgan Foundation, we’ll be back next year. (Winning, like last year.)

Our work in furthering shared reading in prisons and within the Criminal Justice system is expanding, continuing to make a significant and valuable contribution to the process of rehabilitation and reduction in offending amongst group members. Those who attend Get Into Reading groups in prisons, probation and community initatives have been unanimous about the many postive effects shared reading has on their lives – with one man saying that Get Into Reading provided him with “a second chance”.

The winners and finalists will be announced on Tuesday, November 1st.

For more information about the awards, visit the Lemos&Crane website.

The unfortunate aspect of this year’s shortlist is the nature of the critical response. Obviously, literary critics are never going to completely agree with a list of the six best books of the year and they are entitled to their opinion, but the accusation of dumbing down levelled at this year’s judges is disappointing. What exactly have the judges done to deserve condemnation?

For considering “readability” when naming the nominees.

A worrying perception can be derived from the nature of this debate: ‘high-end’ literature and ‘readable’ books are mutually exclusive. For example, Paradise Lost is considered of great literary quality, but reading it could be an intimidating prospect for some. This does not mean it is not ‘readable’, members of Get Into Reading groups often broaden their literary horizons and read material they may normally have considered too difficult.

On the other side of the coin, the argument implies that a novel with a somewhat linear and relatively easy-to-follow narrative cannot be considered as great literature. Of the list the only one I have read is Pigeon English. This is a thoroughly readable novel, and it is a very touching, affecting story relevant to life in 2011. It is a story told from the perspective of an 11-year-old Ghanaian boy living on an estate in London, who investigates the murder of another boy in the community.

I read the final few pages on a descending plane – a time when a few nerves normally kick in – but I wasn’t taking a bit of notice as I took in the climax of the novel, and then re-read the final couple of pages. It is unsettling to think a beautifully written book reminding me of what it was like to be on the cusp of the teens could be victim of condescension for being readable.

Chair of the 2011 judges, Dame Stella Rimington, made a compelling defence of the shortlist selection following the announcement, summing up the frustration quite perfectly:

All this discussion about readability and dumbing down has been a whole load of nonsense in my opinion. I mean, I did use the word ‘readability’ and I shall stick with it although it’s kind of been kicked over and thrown around, and at the end of the day you have to ask yourself what’s a novel for, if it’s not to be read?

Our entry for the prize was very much focussed on partnership – not just the fact that the Trust and The Reader Organisation are working  together, but the personal partnerships formed between Mersey Care staff and the Readers-in-Residence, as they work together to set up and facilitate reading groups on wards and in day settings.  Trust professionals bring their skills in group work and the positive relationships they have formed with service users, essential to recruiting groups.  The Readers-in-Residence bring literary expertise and the energy that comes from having someone  from ‘outside’ coming on site.

In addition, we concentrated on the outcomes the project has seen:  ‘Improvements in confidence, memory, creativity, listening skills’ as the SURE team noted in their 2008 evaluation of the project.  Or as one service user put it, ‘It’s good because our lives are like stories.’

The Competition has been going since 1991 and is open to all ages, offering prizes totalling £1000 across three categories of adult poetry, adult other writing (stories, essays, lyrics etc) and a children’s section.

Entry to the competition is £2 per item but under-14s can enter for free. The deadline for entries is Monday 28 November.

This years winners will be announced at a special awards event at the Royal Clifton Hotel on Wednesday 7 December (6.30pm –8.30pm). The event is to be hosted by David Lonsdale (Heartbeat, The Royal) with entertainment from poet Kei Miller.

Emma Lloyd, Marketing & Programme Manager says:

The Sefton Writing Competition is an annual event that receives hundreds of entries. Past winners have gone on to write their own material and becomes published authors and poets.

We want to support writing initiatives and will publish the winning entries in the new SEFTON magazine and online.

Tickets are available to those who have entered the competition and can be booked over the phone on 0151 928 1919 and picked up from The Civic, Crosby.

Entry forms can be downloaded from the Sefton Arts website but can also be picked up from Southport Tourist Information Centre, libraries, leisure centres and council outlets across Sefton.

Tickets for all Sefton Celebrates Writing Festival events and workshops are on sale now, just call 0151 928 1919 or go online and book your tickets at www.seftonarts.co.uk.

Patrick McGuinness‘ debut novel, The Last Hundred Days, has been longlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize. Set in late 1980s Bucharest, during the violent overthrow of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, the thriller follows a young English student as he witnesses the last days of the violent regime. McGuinness’ work has featured in The Reader magazine a few times, with excerpts  from the start of The Last Hundred Days published in the Spring 2010 issue. Ordinarily a poet, he turned to prose form to depict a time and place he experienced first-hand whilst working as a teaching assistant at 19. Infused with the vivid style of a thriller, The Last Hundred Days presents the lives of dissidents and students working against the secret police, and experiencing the destruction of the city around them, in totalitarian Romania.

The Shortlist of six authors will be announced on 6th September with the overall winner being declared on 18th October at London’s Guildhall, and will be broadcast on the BBC. We will be keeping our figures crossed for Patrick!