Policy Provocations 2012
Policy Provocations 2012: Do we still need libraries?
Wednesday 16th May, 5.30pm
The Florrie, 377 Mill Street, Toxteth
Policy Provocations is a series of lectures, led by the University of Liverpool and City Region partners, which brings together perspectives from leading international, UK and local thinkers to provide a platform for passionate public debate on issues that affect us all. Taking on big policy challenges that shape our future, Policy Provocations confronts them with informed and reasoned debate and asks how we can tackle such challenges in new ways.
The next Policy Provocations event asks the question ‘Do we still need libraries?’. Historically, libraries have helped bring literacy to the masses as well as providing a sense of community, improved health and promotion of wellbeing, but do they still serve the same purpose in a changing society?
The panel will include Sue Charteris, Chair of The Reader Organisation; Alan Davey, Chief Executive, Arts Council England; Councillor Keith Mitchell CBE, Former Leader of Oxfordshire County Council; and, before his guest appearance at The Reader Organisation 2012 Conference, Professor Jonathan Rose. The lecture will be followed by an informal reception for all from 7pm.
Tickets to the event are free but booking is essential; to book your place, please visit the University of Liverpool website or call 0151 794 2650.
E’s Reader Story
E attended approximately five different high schools, due in part to repeated instances of bullying and subsequent poor attendance, finally leaving at sixteen with 3 GCSEs. E first came into contact with TRO through her application to the Trusthouse funded Reader Apprenticeship Programme, which she became aware of when a family member picked up a flyer at a local community mental health initiative. Although E did not gain that particular post, we were keen to have her on board and she was invited to complete our reading assistant training programme. E is now 20 years old, recently completed the 5 week programme, attends 2 GIR groups every week and has become an indispensable asset to the Wirral team in her volunteer placement as a reading assistant. Here is her story:
Before I came to the groups I was housebound. I had no motivation, never spoke to no one, had no confidence; unhappy, basically. I was nervous when I first come [to the group] and didn’t know what to expect – I just thought, ‘what am I doing?!’ But when I went in, everyone greeted me and straight away I knew it was a friendly place so I relaxed a bit. When I first heard what we’d be doing [in the group] – reading – I thought, ‘is this for me?!’ then, once [the facilitator] began I started getting dead into it. The atmosphere and communicating with people – even the layout with the biscuits on the table and getting a drink – is good. It’s like being at home.
I was dreading reading, thought I’d run away, but [the facilitator] said that there was no pressure to read if you didn’t want to and then I felt ok. I never read, not once, when I first came, but then I did the training. I used to stutter my words – was dead edgy talking to people – but even my communication has improved. The other volunteers are lovely – lots of friendly faces when we meet up. To know them is, well, really nice. It’s an opportunity to make friends. The support [from Reader staff] has been great, too.
It’s given me the motivation to get out the house and do more stuff. It’s turned my life around. I’m a completely different person – sometimes I don’t recognise myself, I think, ‘Is this me?!’. It’s made me want to get out and get a life. It’s given me opportunities I’ve never had before. It’s given me the opportunity to do more with my life – I’ve had anxiety and depression and it’s helped me come out of that. You can express how you feel. I’ve achieved something. I used to feel like a nobody and now I feel like a somebody. I’ve never been proud of myself before. I am now. I like feeling helpful. It’s nice to be wanted – I’ve never had that before, I’ve never really been praised. I never used to take compliments; even if someone praised me I couldn’t take it, but now I’m learning to not take the negatives, not to worry what other people think, but just – y’know – see the positives. I used to not the like the world, not like people, but I do now.
I never liked poetry before and now I love it! It’s something I actually enjoy, I like reading something I can relate to. That one the other day (The More Loving One by WH Auden), that was just brilliant! When you leave [a group] it gives you a light, it lights up the rest of your day. I’d suggest this to every single person in the world – it’s fantastic! It changes your aspect – it’s amazing.
When asked whether there was anything more she would like to add, E said, ‘People should know just how friendly it is, it’s really important. Everyone is so welcoming.’
E has gone from strength to strength in her role; having recently been asked to share her experience of how GIR has changed her attitude to reading with a local MP, as well as expanding her current voluntary work with TRO. E has expressed a wish to go to college and one day work for TRO in a paid capacity, saying, ‘I’ve never known what I wanted to do before, but this is it.’
We couldn’t be more pleased to have her with us.
Here at TRO, we’re passionate about helping people like E overcome some of the challenges they face and transform their lives. That’s why our major fundraising campaign for 2012 is The Reader Apprenticeship Programme: Building Opportunities for Life. We’re aiming to raise £14,000 to employ a young care-leaver to work with us in Liverpool and take their first steps towards independence.
To find out how you can support this vital cause, please visit our website.
Like this:
Recommended Reads: Gulliver’s Travels
This week’s Recommended Read comes from our Events and Publications Intern, Michael McGrath, who has been exploring the somewhat forgotten depths of Jonathan Swifts classic, Gulliver’s Travels.
All too often classic tomes are reduced in length and detail as to make them more accessible to the modern imagination. Those who haven’t read Dickens’s Oliver Twist could be forgiven for not having heard of Rose Maylie – the orphan’s long-lost aunt. Similarly, perhaps it is only Janeites (and those of us who are fans of Austen, but who can’t bring ourselves to use the J-word) who are au fait with Charlotte Lucas’s romantic dilemma in Pride and Prejudice.
Time has a habit of chopping away those fatty parts of a story it deems unpalatable.
And so, the numerous adventures reserved for Gulliver have been discarded in the modern mind, bar one: his voyage to the land of Lilliput, with its six-inch tall inhabitants. It is here that Swift employs his most scathing polemic on English society. The triviality of war, the ineptitude of politicians (some things never change), and the insignificant details that separate church from church are all handled with the author’s typical wit and flair.
Perhaps it is Swift’s critique of the feud between the Catholic Church and the Church of England that is most worthy of mentioning. Here we read that all Lilliputians originally split their eggs open by cracking the big end, and are subsequently known as big-endians. But there were those who decided to give the small end a whirl, converting (as it were) to small-endians. The two factions separated, with the small-endians becoming dominant and their counterparts being denounced and marginalised. If there is a more accurate or memorable satire on the trifling nature of religion, I am yet to read it.
“My Little Grildrig, you have made a most admirable panegyric upon your country; you have clearly proved, that ignorance, idleness, and vice, are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator; that laws are best explained, interpreted, and applied, by those whose interest and abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding them. . . I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.” Gulliver’s Travels (Part II, Chapter VI)
Gulliver’s return home from Lilliput does not herald the end of his adventures, however; for our Gulliver is a restless old thing. We see him traveling far afield, encountering the immortal inhabitants of Luggnagg, the maths-obsessed natives of Laputa, and the entirely unpronounceable Houyhnhnms, featured in the final volume of the novel.
It is this last volume that is perhaps my favourite. The Houyhnhnms are a civil race of horses: communicative, peaceful, untainted by the outside world. They are contrasted by the vulgar, brutish Yahoos (a word invented by Swift, and used today to describe loutish yobs). In this, Swift’s last attack on human nature, the horses are represented as reasonable and wise creatures, whilst the human-like Yahoos are violent and coarse – two characteristics Swift deplored.
Gulliver’s Travels is not a book to be read lightly. It explores themes of war, political power, corruption, and self-discovery. Rich and dense in political satire and unforgettable adventures, its influence on the works of other writers is blatant – not just its vivid content, but its literary style and format. It is a vibrant novel that has held the attention of subsequent generations for almost three-hundred years; and it is with this in mind, dear reader, that I would encourage you to maintain this tradition and add Gulliver’s Travels to your must-read list.
Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift, Penguin Classics(1726/2003)
Like this:
Books That Maketh the Man – and the Woman
Is Middlemarch by George Eliot one of the definitive books all women should have in their personal library?
Whilst taking time to sift through her Tweets last week, Jane found this intriguing list via Gutter Bookshop’s Twitter feed of 100 books to maketh a man: ‘The Essential Man’s Library’ as it is being termed, somewhat open to interpretation.
The question that arises from this list, aside from the debates that could rage over whether the books listed are the definitive ones that address qualities of ‘manliness’ and whether any obvious choice is missing, is what would the list of 100 books to maketh a woman look like? Would it be dominated by female authors, of which there are certainly a few ‘essentials’ that spring to mind - George Eliot, the Bronte sisters, Jane Austen… - (interestingly, only four books out of the 100 ‘books for men’ listed were written by a female author) or would strong female characters take precedence? What would be the ‘essential’ life lessons women could take from certain individual books – or are there too many to mention?
We’d love to have your input – leave us a comment here, or tweet us with your choices…
And if you want to be in the loop with all that the director of TRO is up to, why not follow Jane on Twitter directly – or take a look at her newly located blog for lots and lots of interesting reading about reading.
Like this:
Ambitious Communities: Transforming community assets
Locality, the UK’s leading network for community-led organisations, is holding a national conference on community asset transfer in Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire on Friday 6th July 2012.
The event is for anybody passionate about transforming and regenerating their communities by taking over the ownership of local land and buildings. If you are already part of or are interested in being involved in managing a local community asset, work for a voluntary or social enterprise organisation or work for local authority, then the event is for you.
A range of key speakers on the subject of managing community assets will feature at the event – including Ed Mayo from Co-Operatives UK and Steve Wyler from Locality. Delegates will also get the chance to hear from people who are already successfully managing spaces in their local community, discovering the policy, practise and people involved in transforming community assets first hand.
Places cost £95 if you’re from a community group/organisation or social enterprise or £125 for anyone from local authority, the private sector or making an individual booking. Anyone booking by 30th April 2012 will get a 20% discount on these rates.
For more information on the event and booking, please visit the Locality website.
World Book Night: Shakespeare Aloud
Tonight is World Book Night, and all over the UK and beyond booklovers will be gathering to celebrate the simple but very significant power of telling stories and reading aloud in bookshops, libraries and in their homes with family and friends.
Those who keep a close eye on the calendar will also notice that today also marks what would have been William Shakespeare’s 448th birthday and so to celebrate this momentous literary date a selection of Shakespeare’s sonnets will be featured in the back of all of the 25 World Book Night titles, giving the chance for all the lucky readers who get their hands on a free book the added bonus of easily accessing and enjoying some of the Bard’s finest work. In events around the country, these sonnets will be read by candlelight tonight: a beautiful way to experience the joy of reading aloud and mark Shakespeare’s birthday.
To have our own celebration of World Book Night, The Reader Online presents some special Shakespeare readings, with TRO staff selecting and reading aloud some of their favoured pieces from the Bard’s vast repetoire. Hopefully they’ll inspire you to read your own favourite piece of Shakespeare aloud…
First up is Angela Macmillan, editor of A Little, Aloud, reading a very atmospheric ’Ariel’s Song’ from The Tempest – a taster for the upcoming A Little, Aloud for Children. Anyone who has been to the Penny Readings over the years knows that hearing Angie reading aloud is a treat for the ears and coupled with the words of Shakespeare it’s extra special:
Niall Gibney, Community Development Assistant, takes us back to the heady summer days of Merseyside Community Theatre and gives us a bit of Scouse Shakespeare by reciting Romeo’s most famous monologue from Romeo and Juliet:
”But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?”
Continuing the Shakespeare read by Scousers theme is Lisa Spurgin, Trainee Communications Assistant, with one of the Sonnets; Sonnet 15, to be precise:
And finally, representing another part of the North West is Aaron Eastwood, Communications Intern, who reads a particular Reader favourite – Sonnet 116 (‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds’), which is featured in both A Little, Aloud and our Poems To Take Home anthologies (both still available to buy now):
Featured Poem: We Are Seven by William Wordsworth
This week’s Featured Poem comes from Caroline Adams, Project Worker for Get Into Reading South West, with a wonderfully touching example of how a poem can often have much deeper resonance than its appearance may first suggest…
It seems, on a superficial reading, that this is such a simple poem but, like much of the Wordsworth I have read, it touches on big themes which prompt a strong reaction from the reader. The matter-of-fact way in which the little girl at the centre of the poem talks about her dead siblings has a poignancy which strikes at the heart of modern views of death and grief.
I used it recently in a group . “My little brother died at the age of 4 back in the ’30s and I never got the chance to grieve for him – now I will.” said a member. He went on to explain how his mother had explained the death with platitudes like ” It was for the best,” even though the child had died of an illness which might now be cured with antibiotics. It was never much discussed in the family after that. As a consequence, my group member felt he had never had the chance to properly come to terms with the death . He said he might even attempt to write a poem about the lost brother, and this prompted a discussion about how well we deal with loss now compared with Wordsworth’s era.
As I say – big stuff from such a simple yet lovely poem.
We Are Seven
A simple child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?
I met a little cottage Girl:
She was eight years old, she said;
Her hair was thick with many a curl
That clustered round her head.
She had a rustic, woodland air,
And she was wildly clad:
Her eyes were fair, and very fair;
—Her beauty made me glad.
‘Sisters and brothers, little Maid,
How many may you be?’
‘How many? Seven in all,’ she said,
And wondering looked at me.
‘And where are they? I pray you tell.’
She answered, ‘Seven are we;
And two of us at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea.
‘Two of us in the church-yard lie,
My sister and my brother;
And, in the church-yard cottage, I
Dwell near them with my mother.’
‘You say that two at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea,
Yet ye are seven!—I pray you tell,
Sweet Maid, how this may be.’
Then did the little Maid reply,
‘Seven boys and girls are we;
Two of us in the church-yard lie,
Beneath the church-yard tree.’
‘You run above, my little Maid,
Your limbs they are alive;
If two are in the church-yard laid,
Then ye are only five.’
‘Their graves are green, they may be seen,’
The little Maid replied,
‘Twelve steps or more from my mother’s door,
And they are side by side.
‘My stockings there I often knit,
My kerchief there I hem;
And there upon the ground I sit,
And sing a song to them.
‘And often after sun-set, Sir,
When it is light and fair,
I take my little porringer,
And eat my supper there.
‘The first that died was sister Jane;
In bed she moaning lay,
Till God released her of her pain;
And then she went away.
‘So in the church-yard she was laid;
And, when the grass was dry,
Together round her grave we played,
My brother John and I
‘And when the ground was white with snow,
And I could run and slide,
My brother John was forced to go,
And he lies by her side.’
‘How many are you, then,’ said I,
‘If they two are in heaven?’
Quick was the little Maid’s reply,
‘O Master! we are seven.’
‘But they are dead; those two are dead!
Their spirits are in heaven!’
’Twas throwing words away; for still
The little Maid would have her will,
And said, ‘Nay, we are seven!’
William Wordsworth
World Book Night at News From Nowhere
The biggest country-wide celebration of reading, World Book Night, is just around the corner, with tens of thousands of passionate book lovers from all over the UK poised to share the 25 specially selected and best-loved books for absolutely no price at all. What could be better than getting your hands on a free book? Perhaps a whole night of bookish delights at Liverpool’s very own independent bookshop…
News From Nowhere are holding a special evening event on World Book Night – Monday 23rd April from 6pm-9pm – to allow literature lovers to celebrate the momentous occasion surrounded by tons of books. They’ll have 25 free copies of one of the World Book Night books, Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, to give away on the night, as well as a communal book display for readers to show off the books they love, a range of one-minute readings from favourite books, consolation prizes for those who don’t manage to snap up one of the 25 free copies of Good Omens and refreshments for all.
Whether you’re a seasoned booklover or you’ve never been in a bookshop before, this night is for you – you can browse, buy or just soak up the bookish atmosphere. It’s also Shakespeare’s birthday, and we’re sure he could think of no better birthday party than sharing in the joys of books.
World Book Night at News From Nowhere
Monday 23rd April, 6pm-9pm
News from Nowhere Radical & Community Bookshop, 96 Bold St, Liverpool, L1 4HY 0151 708 7270
And make sure you join us right here on the blog on Monday for our own Shakespeare inspired World Book Night celebrations…
Like this:
Conference Tasters #3: Lemn Sissay
It’s time for another taster of what you can expect from the speakers at our forthcoming National Conference. You’ve already heard from Professor Jonathan Rose and Erwin James, so now it’s the turn of Lemn Sissay, award-winning poet.
One of the official Olympic poets for 2012, Lemn is also associate artist at the Southbank Centre and was awarded an MBE in 2010. He recently became a patron of The Reader Organisation and will be appearing on the panel discussing ‘Literature and Children’s Wellbeing’ on Day One. As someone who spent 17 years growing up in the care system, Lemn is passionate about improving the lives of Looked After Children through initiatives such as our own Get Into Reading project.
He will also be appearing in conversation with TRO’s Jane Davis at Day Two of our conference, a day exclusively designed for those who have completed our Read to Lead training.
Here’s a preview of his thoughts:
What is the last book you read that moved you?
A Love Letter from a Stray Moon by Jay Griffiths
Why are you interested in what The Reader Organisation does?
The Reader Organisation releases the true life changing power of the intimate act of reading.
To hear more from Lemn Sissay and our work with young people, book your place now for The Reader Organisation’s National Conference, 17th-18th May 2012, British Library, London. Visit our website to register and for more details about the programme.
Like this:
Sea Odyssey Giant Spectacular and Out of the Blue Launch
This weekend sees a Giant Spectacular descend upon Liverpool with the staging of the Sea Odyssey. The world’s greatest street theatre company, Royal De Luxe, is marking the centenary of the Titanic’s sinking by telling a magical tale of love, loss and reunion played out on a gigantic scale across North Liverpool and the City Centre.
On Friday 20th April, the Little Girl Giant will be arriving in Everton Park as part of her journey. To welcome her to the community, and to officially launch the Out of the Blue Festival 2012 programme, West Everton Community Council and Friends of Everton Park will be holding a ‘Picnic in the Park’ at the top of Everton Park. Members of the community and other visitors are invited to sing songs, share stories and have some lunch as the Little Girl has her siesta between 12.30-4pm.
The event will also be the culmination of Get Into Reading’s Titanic memorial celebrations – for the past few weeks, Get Into Reading groups across Liverpool and Wirral have been reading and discussing poems and other pieces inspired by the sinking of the Titanic, sharing memories of the world’s most famous ship. As part of the Sea Odyssey event and Out of the Blue launch, Get Into Reading Liverpool Project Manager Eleanor Stanton will be reading Thomas Hardy’s The Convergence of the Twain at the Park on Friday so to share in the reading, come along for what promises to be a great celebration – and if you can, please wear something blue.
