By coming together to read, we can change lives for the better
A new project being launched in Belfast today has the potential to transform communities across NI, writes James Kerr
In 2013 Verbal had a wonderful opportunity to develop a new programme as part of the Derry/Londonderry City of Culture. Recognising the need for meaningful, long-lasting engagement that was available and accessible to all, the team at Verbal strived to create a programme that would help bring positive meaningful change to people’s lives: Reading Rooms was born.
The idea of developing a project that would focus on reading together and sharing the experiences stimulated by the best in local, national and international creative writing was the outworking of a long period of joint deliberation with the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, which is Verbal’s core funder and main supporter.
The concept of promoting rich, sustainable community engagement, especially for those sections of the population which have reduced or no access to the arts through reading, was a game changer in how we thought about literature and literature development.
Reading Rooms is not a book club, you don’t need to buy a book, and the literature is not chosen to diversify or develop a participant’s reading habits (though this is often an outcome).
It is designed as an opportunity for immersive storytelling through shared reading that inspires meaningful, purposeful conversations in a safe space. Reading Rooms is a very powerful and affecting thing to witness. It’s a simple idea, but it has been tremendously effective and has come along at the right place and right time.
Using trained and accredited volunteers, Reading Rooms is delivered in communities across Northern Ireland and beyond. Thematically specific high-quality literature is selected or commissioned from local and national writers by in-house literary experts and read to a group of participants by trained facilitators.
Before being read the stories or poems are annotated with regular talking points developed by in-house psychologists. The facilitator pauses at the identified talking points to ask questions prompted by the literature, covering themes such as empathy, resilience, hopefulness and mental wellbeing. Conversations about the characters, plots and themes are used to develop organic discussions around how these things may relate to aspects of participants’ own lives.
As Reading Rooms has grown we have had the privilege of developing partnerships that have enabled us to work with a wide and diverse range of participants and communities.
One of our newest partners is the Housing Executive and we are working together on Listen, Share, Change, a project supported through PEACE IV funding. The project will opListen,
❝ Reading Rooms was a simple idea, but has been tremendously effective and came at the right time
erate across Northern Ireland over the next four years.
It will equip participants with skills enabling them to become active decision-makers and part of the process in addressing our vision of developing a society in which housing has a role in creating a peaceful, inclusive, prosperous and fair society. As part of the programme, which is open to Housing Executive areas across the province, participants will be offered the opportunity to meet new people and participate in shared reading experiences.
Participants will get the opportunity to experience the writing of local authors such as Lucy Caldwell (right), Paul McVeigh, Moyra Donaldson, Garrett Carr and Claire Bennett as well as writers such as Seamus Heaney among others. The stories will be selected specifically to address the ca- pacity of the groups as well as open up thematically relevant discussions.
It is hoped that long-term, through working with people from different communities, cultural and religious backgrounds, Listen, Share, Change will make a positive impact on the ways in which our different communities perceive and interact with each other, building higher levels of empathy and community resilience.
Share, Change will use the Reading Rooms model of immersive storytelling to inspire meaningful conversations and in turn address the needs of over 1,500 Housing Executive tenants across Northern Ireland.
By engaging participants through reading together and discussion around purposefully selected literary works, they will be encouraged to explore and reflect on issues relevant to their own lives such as diversity, prejudice and conflict.
The project aims to build positive relations between people from different communities and backgrounds.
Fifty-two communities will be engaged during the project with a view to developing 26 cross-community partnerships. Communities already signed up include Roe Valley Community Association, Greysteel Community Association, Black Mountain Action Group, Townsend Street Outreach Centre, Welcome Project resurgam (Youth PUL), Knocknagoney Community Centre, Kilcooley Womens Centre, and with many more to come.
Listen, Share, Change will provide OCN Level 2 training in facilitation skills for shared reading for over 120 volunteers, who will then become ‘neighbourhood champions’, which will give them the opportunity to keep the project going beyond the funding. In addition, 104 future youth leaders will
❝ Storytelling at its best is representation of social information and social experience
promote active citizenship and engagement.
Our own research carried out by our in-house psychology team has already identified that the work of Reading Rooms has had positive effects in building empathy and resilience at a group and individual level. More research is needed to evidence the need for such creative interventions.
But we have no doubt that storytelling at its best is representation of social information and social experience — the kind of information that all of us as human beings process from infancy without the need for education and training.
In other words, humans are ‘hardwired’ to process the kind of social information presented in stories. Through creative experience stories can stimulate a positive change in attitudes and beliefs.
Listen, Share, Change is a powerful challenge to the present thinking of the arts as an add-on or a luxury.
It is also a response to the lack of self-confidence displayed in some quarters that insists the arts should become ‘mini businesses’.
Instead, through this exciting and innovative partnership, Listen, Share, Change reaffirms the central purpose of the arts as an essential contributor to a resilient and healthy society.