Time For A Change Toolkit
THE PROJECT - From Reading Lifelines to Everybody's Reading
Aims and objectives
The two projects named above ran from September 2000 to August 2002 and targeted socially excluded 16 - 25 year olds living in North West England. The aim was to engage with the target age group using youth work techniques, encouraging activities at a level that worked for them, in order to develop their reading and make use of their local libraries. We wanted to increase library usage by 10% locally in the project base libraries and 3% regionally. This included increases in membership, book issues and use of ICT. In the second year the focus was around mainstreaming and significantly extending the reader development work successfully initiated during the first year by building effective systems to develop, extend and sustain the project across the region and integrate it into the everyday work of libraries.
Regional Project Co-ordinator
The project co-ordinator, seconded from Bolton Libraries, was nominated by the 'Time to Read' working party who constructed the original bid. This meant that an officer was in post from the beginning of the project who was known to all consortium authorities through 'Time to Read'. Bolton Libraries were willing to second a co-ordinator for two years, and were also willing to act as lead authority to handle the financial aspects of the project. The only aspect they were not prepared to take responsibility for was the appointment of the outreach staff who would deliver the project on the ground, with the exception of their individual outreach worker. Each consortium authority had to recruit and employ their own worker, and invoice Bolton for costs, who in turn invoiced the DCMS /Wolfson Challenge fund.
The project co-ordinator enabled the management of the project, including budgetary control, in order to meet performance targets. Good practice was developed and shared regionally and quality training provided. In addition the co-ordinator worked with the main partners to achieve delivery of high quality publicity materials and a first class website. A small steering group supported the co-ordinator offering advice, sharing the administrative load at meetings and training sessions and working on additional funding applications.
Outreach Workers
The recruitment of the workers proved to be a lengthy process in several authorities because of council committee approval processes. In these cases hours had to be increased in order to maximise the funding. However, varied backgrounds allowed the consortium to pool new skills and try different approaches. For the second year eleven of the original outreach workers remained in post. Eight new appointments were made. Of the eleven remaining, five were secondments from library staff, six were non-librarians. Of the eight new appointments four were secondments, four were external appointments. It was interesting to note the increase in secondments during the second year. When this was discussed, it became clear that interest had grown from existing library staff once they could see more clearly what the project was about. The 'new blood' had been very effective in bringing enthusiasm and new skills into the region in order to attract young people into libraries. Skills were shared with other staff within the individual authorities and regionally through the Outreach Worker Forum, a vehicle which developed the project and provided a valuable networking tool for sharing good practice.
The outreach workers had individual line managers within authorities. The majority of these managers were members of Time to Read and played a crucial role in managing the project locally by supervising the workers and disseminating project information to other managers and library staff. However, a need was identified here for increased operational and strategic support. This resulted in more team focus in the support at a local level.
Delivery
The work achieved with the target age group has been largely successful, but changed approaches were required to achieve the overall objectives of the project. Problems were turned into positive challenges by exploring different areas, starting from where the young people were, often with no interest in books or reading, but strong alternative interests such as music, being with friends, computer games, sport.
Some of the promotions and activities included:
- Changing rooms / library makeovers. Some libraries transformed areas to create informal leisure spaces, others defined a space for Everybody's Reading through the introduction of dump bins and comfortable seating, and using the publicity material produced during the second year of the project - hanging banners, shelf edge strips, dump bin headers and book stickers. Young people consulted and involved in the changes.
- Local websites created to supply current up to date local information for young people, and to use them as a forum for an exchange of their ideas. A good example is one developed in Halton called Haltonyouth [9]. Warrington libraries working in conjunction with youth services have also created a useful site [10]. Access to computer hardware, Internet drop-in sessions, music software, computer games have all been popular.
- Art based approaches were very successful, using local artists or outreach worker skills to involve the young people in design, painting, photography, music, drama, creative writing and even composing a library jingle. In order for this range of activity to take place additional Regional Arts Lottery funding of £30,000, was bid for and granted by the North West Arts Board.(now Arts Council England, North West) [11]
- Work with parent and child groups helped reach young parents and their reading needs through initial work with their children.
- The second year saw the establishment of several reading groups across the authorities, building on contacts established under 'Reading Lifelines'. Blackpool report their young people's reading group, intriguingly named 'Monkey Tennis', is firmly established and thriving. Bury and Tameside ran reading groups for a time limited period during the project at venues outside the library. Knowsley, reported other agencies using a reading group approach with young people in crisis following on from the success of the author Lauren Roche's visit, using Lauren's book 'Bent not broken' as a starting point. Warrington and Wirral combined the reading group with the ICT approach to develop on line / virtual reading groups. In Wirral young people can review anything they like, books, videos, games etc. They can also write about their own reading experiences. The site is accessible on the Wirral Library Service website [12]
- The media were used to reinforce positive library messages and to challenge stereotypes. For example rock groups in libraries, librarians climbing the wall in Lancashire, all night 'read - ins' at Asda, curry nights, fortune telling, blind dates with a book, books for Christmas, site nites, local celebrities and so on.
