Boox for Us, a joint National Youth Agency programme with Well Worth Reading [the library-based reader development agency now known as The Reading Agency], brought together youth workers and librarians in six demonstration projects, modestly financed and supported by the National Year of Reading. The programme showed how partnerships could be formed to tackle a non-reading culture and to develop the reading habits of socially excluded young people. Projects took place in settings as diverse as youth clubs and homes for children in care, and made imaginative use of libraries.

One pilot project was based at Litherland Library on Merseyside. Groups of young people hanging outside the library would intimidate other young people attempting to go in - some of those who did make it in were also disruptive and intimidating. The project attempted to build a sense of ownership of the library and its pleasures. Youth workers encouraged librarians to develop a programme helped by bringing in community artists for project work. The young people were given a sense of being welcomed as a group, not just as individuals and certainly not as a threat. The group outside the library was not forgotten - a detached youth work team made contact and developed relationships and activities with them.

In Scotswood, Newcastle, the project was based at a centre for young people not attending or already excluded from school. The project endeavoured to make literature an enjoyable pastime that would help them focus and deal with important issues in their lives. The project used questionnaires to help readers tease out feelings about particular books and several eloquent and moving accounts resulted.

What youth workers traditionally bring to work with young people is a capacity to form relationships with them, especially with those who are disadvantaged or marginalised. Youth workers bring knowledge about young people and the issues that affect them and know how to start where they are and to help them to move on in their lives. Helping them to choose books, to read more widely is, at its deepest, a way of empowering individuals and of educating the imagination. As one librarian involved in the project commented: "It's been invaluable to learn from youth workers how to develop good relationships with young people, and how to plan programmes that really interest them."

Lessons from the demonstration projects have been captured in a resource pack, The Reading Kit, which passes on the projects' findings on creating and maintaining partnerships. It illustrates the different approaches and activities that can be used for reader development and shows how to structure young people's greater involvement in reading.
 

YOUTHBOOX is an action research programme, launched in January 2000, to explore which reading hooks work most powerfully with young people aged 13-18 years. The programme links reading with computers, live literature and other art forms and encourages young people to share reading experiences and record their own lives as readers. It is funded by the Arts Council of England's New Audiences programme and builds on the Boox for Us experiences. YOUTHBOOX projects include:  Interchill in Liverpool, a drop-in centre for young people with Internet access, video conferencing and counselling rooms; Rhythm of the Word, Gloucestershire, which aims to give a group of Afro-Caribbean young people the opportunity to experience poetry in a range of styles and media, working with community artists to create their own words through music, art and written or electronic format; A library outreach project in Harleston, a small rural area in Norfolk, which will work with a group of 16-year-old boys, some of whom have been excluded from school, to develop stories, poems and song lyrics of their own, using ICT and based on work with graphic novels and storytelling. For more details of the YOUTHBOOX scheme and for copies of The Reading Kit visit www.readingagency.org.uk.

 

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