News
Events to Help Open the Book on Young People’s Reading
01 June 2010
The free seminars will disseminate the learning from the Out of the Box project, run by National Youth Agency and the Reading Agency from April 2009 to March 2010.
The one day events are to be held in London and Manchester during July 2010.
They aim to highlight opportunities to encourage young people in youth work settings to read more widely and more frequently. They will also promote closer working between libraries and youth workers to help build active reading communities in youth work settings.
Susan Quinn, National Youth Agency National Programme Manager, said: “The Out of the Box project engaged with over 300 young people across 18 projects in five regions of England and produced some fantastic feedback for use by both youth workers and libraries.
“The findings of the project make it clear that actively seeking young people’s participation results in some tremendous outcomes, including an increase in library membership, young people’s use of libraries and facilities, sharing reading when outside the project and, most significantly, more young people reading more often and more widely.”
The seminars will be held in London on 9th July and Manchester on 16th July 2010 and are suitable for practitioners and managers from integrated youth support services, voluntary youth organisations and library services.
For further information and to book your FREE place, visit www.nya.org.uk/events
ENDS
Notes to Editors:
What is Out of the Box?
Out of the Box is a project supporting developmental opportunities for reading for young people aged 14 to 19 who are disaffected or disengaged from formal education. It does this by encouraging young people in youth work settings to read more widely and more frequently and supporting stronger library-youth work partnerships. The National Youth Agency and the Reading Agency worked with local authorities around the country on the project, funded by the (then) Department for Children, Schools and Families. Some 336 young people across 18 projects in five regions of England participated in this phase of Out of the Box between April 2009 and March 2010.
What Did It Find?
Feedback from the projects makes it clear that their participation resulted in:
• Increased library membership
• An increase in library issues to young project participants
• An increase in young people’s use of libraries and facilities
• A range of recorded and accredited outcomes (eg ASDAN, v)
• A number of young people sharing reading outside the project.
What Are the Conclusions?
Out of the Box concluded there are three critical conditions for success in what works.
Firstly, there needs to be effective partnership. Experience showed that projects failing to establish such a partnership struggled to get started or sustain themselves.
Conversely, projects with an effective youth worker-librarian partnership in which both sides are enthusiastic about reading and committed to the project flourished.
“The partnership working has been excellent. Staff from the library has been friendly and enthusiastic and we hope to continue the partnership in future. I have found the library staff to be very professional.”
Secondly, the young people need to be an already established group. “Our initial aim was to work with 16 and 17-year-olds from a nearby hostel. After a first meeting it seemed a good possibility but afterwards we were unable to meet with them as a group and lost a good deal of time hoping it would come to fruition. This left us with no real time to get any sort of group together, so we had to opt for an established one.”
Thirdly, it is critical to start where young people are and work with them in practical and informal ways.
“Young people feel that by being asked to sit and write they are working, but if they become involved in an animation project they are happy to sit and write a storyboard.”