“Read to Lead taught me more about reading than my MA in literature ever did.” – Shared Reading Facilitator

We are accepting applications for the final few places on the upcoming Read to Lead training course in London. Read to Lead equips you with the skills and understanding of a shared reading facilitator, and the ability to run shared reading groups inspired by The Reader Organisation’s ground-breaking Get Into Reading project. Read to Lead is a training course and a personal experience in its own right, the beginning of a journey developing the craft of shared reading, and a special way to get involved in the Reading Revolution.

Completion of the course also allows access to Day Two of The Reader Organisation’s forthcoming National Conference - Living to Read Well - exclusively designed for those who have completed Read to Lead and who wish to develop their practice as readers and facilitators. Taking place at the British Library on 18th May, you can find out more information and book your place here.

The course will run on 14th – 16th May at 8 Hop Gardens, off St Martin’s Lane, London WC2. The three-day course and 12-month access to The Reader Organisation’s CPD programme costs £750. Flexible payment options are available. Download your application form here or contact roisinhyland@thereader.org.uk for more information.

The Lauries Centre, Birkenhead, Merseyside.

Six weeks of stories by great tellers of tales about different kinds of help, Sarah Jewett, Kipling, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, William Trevor and Graham Swift. The dilemma of caring is that it’s often the helper that becomes dependent. Come and read some stories together, no work needed in advance and copies will be provided.

The six week course starts on Monday 14th May at 10 30am in The Lauries Community Centre in Birkenhead. All funds go to The Reader Organisation, so you’ll also be supporting the organisation - giving help and caring in fact!

The cost of the course starts at £40[full price] and £30 for pensioners or students. Get into Reading members will get a reduced rate of £25, and those on income support £15.

 To book your place, email rachelsalmon@thereader.org.uk or call 0151 650 5466 or 07807 106859.

There are still a few spaces available on our upcoming masterclass ‘Putting The Reader to Work’, scheduled to run on: Tuesday 24th April, 1pm – 5pm at The Lauries Comunity Centre, Birkenhead.

You’ll all be familiar with The Reader magazine. You’ll be a subscriber since you trained. You may even know that this quarterly publication was the starting point of The Reader Organisation’s outreach work, precursor of Get Into Reading project and the shared reading model. What you may not be doing is putting The Reader to work, really using the magazine as a personal resource that will make you a better reader, and a better facilitator as a result.

Join Jane Davis, Director of TRO and founding editor of the magazine, to explore this wonderful resource together. Email jessicareeves@thereader.org.uk to secure your place, or call 0151 207 7207.

The degree is unique; the first in the country to combine the study of a full range of literature with community projects. Students, from a diverse set of age groups, will be given the opportunity to develop a reading project within their local community, in settings which currently include libraries, pubs and community centres. The focus of the course is on utilising reading in a wide variety of places.

The University will be charging a lower tuition fee for this course for the 2012/13 enrolment: fees are £2,550 per year of the course, an equivalent of £5,100 per full-time year.

For more information on the course, click here or e-mail tom.sperlinger@bristol.ac.uk

Our Northern Ireland project worker Patricia Canning fills us in the ongoing progress of Get Into Reading Northern Ireland, highlighting the powerful impact words and literature have amongst a wide range of people:

Every Wednesday afternoon I read with a group of women who tell me that being a part of this Get Into Reading group makes them feel relaxed, ‘chilled’, less stressed, and on the whole, liberated. The irony is, that this GIR group is in Hydebank Prison, Belfast. Reading an extract from Dickens’s A Christmas Carol a few weeks back, the women talked about how his depiction of the biting cold had made them all feel very chilly: ‘he really knows how to describes things, doesn’t he? I’m freezing here!’

Being able to ‘feel’ what the writer is describing – even if it is the cold – is a testament to the power of words, and of the benefits of reading good literature. These women, like everyone else who benefits from attending Get Into Reading groups across the mainland, enjoy that liberating feeling of being able to identify with other characters, with events and with feelings and emotions that they might otherwise struggle to understand, articulate, or even acknowledge. Words can do that – as Ferdinand Pessoa puts it:

To express something is to conserve its virtue and take away its terror. Fields are greener in their description than in their actual greenness. Flowers, if described with phrases that define them in the air of the imagination, will have colours with a durability not found in cellular life.

Reading a difficult Shakespearean sonnet recently, one of the women read the line, ‘I all alone beweep my outcast state’, and proclaimed, ‘it’s about depression, isn’t it?’ In our group, Shakespeare has helped us understand that depression is a timeless phenomenon and can chance upon the best of us.

Thankfully, these benefits are reaching further afield because people are attending to the positive effects of shared reading here, as Health In Mind’s recent poetry and prose event at Coleraine library so wonderfully demonstrated. We now have a fantastic Get Into Reading group in Queen’s University, Belfast, every Thursday afternoon, which is well attended by a spirited bunch of people who read, chat, drink tea, chat, read, and marvel at the ways in which reading together enriches both the reading experience and our day in equal measure.

The Reading Revolution has begun in Northern Ireland, but we need passionate people who believe in the power of reading to help take it even further. We are hosting an open Read To Lead training course at Holywood Library over three weeks: Friday 3rd, 10th and 17th February 2012. If you want to share the joys of shared reading in your community, there are a few places left on the course. For further details and to book your place, please contact Jessica Reeves for more information: jessicareeves@thereader.org.uk

If you want to have the real-life Nellibobs reading experience, there’s still plenty of time to sign up to Brian’s Dorset Delights course  at Birkenhead Central Library. The course takes place each Thursday morning, 10.30am-12.30pm for the next nine weeks, exploring literature inspired by the county. Places on the course cost £60; £50 for pensioners, students and those on income support; £40 for Get Into Reading members and £30 for GIR members receiving income support.

To book your place, download a booking form here or e-mail Jessica Reeves: jessicareeves@thereader.org.uk

Over the next couple of months, open Read To Lead courses will be coming to Northern Ireland, Barnsley and London – any individual is eligible to sign up and take part. So if you want to share the joys of shared reading in your community or perhaps if your New Year’s resolution is to do something different to make a difference then being part of Read To Lead and becoming a trained shared reading facilitator is  for you.

And if you want to celebrate Dickens’ bicentenary in unique but what would surely be Dickens-approved style, there could be no better way to do so than to embark on a  Read To Lead course. We could all take a tip from the young David Copperfield:

This was my only and my constant comfort. When I think of it, the picture always arises in my mind of a summer evening, the boys at play in the churchyard, and I sitting on my bed, reading as if for life.

On a Read To Lead course you’ll find that reading is indeed for life and full of life.

Read To Lead Northern Ireland
Holywood Library, BT18 9AE
3rd, 10th, 17th February; 10am-4pm
(This course takes place over Dickens’ bicentenary, so there may just be some Dickens on offer to read…!)

Read To Lead Barnsley
Barnsley Digital Media Centre, S70 2JW
8th, 15th, 22nd February; 10am-4pm

Read To Lead London
Central Venue TBC
12th, 19th, 26th March; 10am-4pm 

For more information on any of these courses, please contact Jessica Reeves on 0151 207 7221/jessicareeves@thereader.org.uk or Casi Dylan on 0141 357 1738/casidylan@thereader.org.uk . You can also download a booking form in Word or PDF formats.

I’ve been running a group for two years at the Plymouth MIND drop-in centre. One of the core group of committed regulars, M, had a social phobia and would never have dreamt of reading in front of others. She is now one of our best readers:

 ”I have come to learn the power of words in our lives…the group has become the highlight of my week and I clear the calendar to ensure I can make the sessions.”

I love both the variety and stimulation the weekly groups provide.

Plymouth City Council are funding Get Into Reading for community-building and recovery at Plymstock Library. It is an open group which also invites GP referrals.

In the isolated village of Newton Ferrers, I’ve begun a community group in an Edwardian ‘Fisherman’s Reading Room’. It was an all-male snooker club until TRO entered the premises! This is the first step in a big South West project to restore old reading rooms in hard to reach places to their original purpose. The aim is to get reading happening again, training up local people to take over and help spread the Reading Revolution across the village.

Have you thought of becoming a shared reading facilitator?
The next South West 3-day Read to Lead open training course is at Dartington, Monday 23rd January – Wednesday 25th January 2012, 9.30am -5.30am. For more information, ring Sarah Hopkins (SW) on 01364 653994 or Casi Dylan on 0151 207 7207/e-mail casidylan@thereader.org.uk .

Three women recently told me what had made them join shared reading groups. All three had moved to the area suddenly due to their husbands’ retirement and consequently had left families and friends behind. They came to shared reading because they felt lonely, isolated and depressed. This is what they had to say about attending the group:

 ”This has been my lifeline.”

 ”I don’t know what would have happened to me if I hadn’t had this each week.”

If you’d like to become a shared reading facilitator, our next 3-day Read To Lead open training course takes place in Dartington from Monday 23rd January – Wednesday 25th January, 9.30am-5.30pm. For more information on booking a place, ring Sarah Hopkins (SW) on 01364 653994 or Casi Dylan on 0151 207 7207/e-mail casidylan@thereader.org.uk .

However if you missed out then there’s no need to fear because Part Two begins in the New Year, in the very same place. Brian will continue to illustrate Dorset’s various strong literary connections by reading a selection of works from authors who lived, loved (in the case of Sir Thomas Wyatt, Dorset was his final resting place, being buried there) and were inspired by the picturesque county.

Jane Austen frequently holidayed in Lyme Regis and the resort figures large in Persuasion, which would be her last completed novel, and which will be read during the course. Wordsworth wrote his earliest poems in Dorset and T.F Powys and John Fowles both lived there – to signal this, the course will also feature poems and short stories by these three writers.

This selection of literary works will be read over a ten week period, and promises to be relaxing, illuminating and immensely enjoyable. The course will start on Thursday 19th January at Birkenhead Central Library and all texts will be provided. Funds will go towards supporting The Reader Organisation. For more information on booking, call 0151 207 7207.

Also, you can get a taster of what to expect from the wonderful Mr Nellist here…