Time For A Change Toolkit
THE FUTURE OF READER DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITY IN NORTH WEST ENGLAND
As well as changes within individual authorities a major outcome of the DCMS Wolfson Public Libraries Challenge fund project in North West England has been the establishment of a regional co-ordinator's post working for Time To Read as a whole. The success of Reading Lifelines and Everybody's Reading was in many ways attributable to their co-ordinator who was able to ensure that staff were in place, trained and supported, controlled and administered the budgets and monitored and evaluated the work. She gave the project identity and coherence.
As Everybody's Reading neared its end date, Time To Read became concerned that individual library authorities should not lose the sense of moving forward with reader development work that many of them had only recently begun to see as valuable and successful. Staff in individual authorities are increasingly busy and covering a variety of functions and unable to concentrate on moving work forward. So that progress would continue it was felt to be important that a post focused on reader development should be established for the region. This was strongly supported by the regional Arts Board (now Arts Council England, North West). Authorities were asked to contribute funding to support the salary of a co-ordinator and provide a small working budget. Most were quick to recognise the usefulness of this post and plans were quickly drawn up to recruit.
The post of Regional Reader Development co-ordinator, which is currently unique in the English regions, has been established for an initial period of two years .The principal responsibilities of the post were described at the recruitment stage as:
- Development and implementation of a regional strategy for reader development
- To co-ordinate and evaluate a range of reader development projects & training
- Promotion of new & contemporary writing
- Focus on adult reader development and working with families
- To identify & bid for funding with the support of the Time To Read partnership steering group
In addition to the above, one of the main roles of the post in practice has proved to be advocacy and support. Many staff with responsibility for reader development in individual authorities tend to be at a junior level within their own structures. An important role for the co-ordinator is talking up the importance and value of reader development work to library managers, as well as offering one-to-one support and advice to staff members. Coupled with an increase in a national impetus for reader development (e.g.. national offers such as World Book Day, The Big Read Campaign) reader development staff is well aware that they are working within a fast-moving and pro-active environment.
