'Get Into Reading' Project Celebrates Tenth Birthday

Liverpool Hope partner The Reader Organisation’s Get Into Reading project celebrates its tenth birthday this September. 

With its mission to ‘bring about a reading revolution’, the charity’s Read Aloud groups have taken Shakespeare to supermarkets, poetry to prisons and Hardy to hospitals.

The project, which aims to connect people with great literature and each other, was started in 2002 by the charity’s director Jane Davis.

Jane says: "I wanted to get books into the hands of people like myself who needed them, so I set up Get Into Reading to bring books and people together. People began to tell me: 'This isn’t just reading, this is good for my health, you should be getting paid by the NHS'."

Each week the charity delivers over 200 groups across Merseyside, reaching over 1,300 people aged 3 to 103. And the revolution is growing: there are another 100 groups taking place in London, the South West, Glasgow and Belfast.

Impacts of the groups include increased personal confidence and reduced social isolation, improved emotional and psychological wellbeing, greater stability and support, and a growing love of books.

Dave Cookson, along with Charlotte Weber, is the charity's 'Reader in Residence' at Liverpool Hope. He writes: 'Charlotte Weber and I work closely with the Faculty of Education in creating a vibrant atmosphere revolving around reading across campus. 

'The campus is a brilliant place to be, there are so many people here we can inspire to become social and active readers who go on to deliver a Reading Revolution to even more people.'

To mark the project’s tenth birthday, The Reader Organisation has put together a list of the most popular books from the past ten years of Get Into Reading and wants to find out who the public would most like to hear reading these books aloud. You can read the list and vote for your favourite at www.thereader.org.uk from Monday 3^rd September.