Young People
It can be tough to get young people reading for pleasure. With so many things competing for their free time, survey after survey has found that young people's interest in reading can drop off - particularly once they get to secondary school.
However, we know that if you capture a young person's imagination and get him or her involved then they can, and do, get fired up by reading. There was also encouraging news when a recent survey found that secondary school pupils said that being able to design websites would get more of them to read more. *
So that's what we're doing. With one of our projects anyway. We are launching a new social reading website groupthing to give librarians, teachers and other professionals working with young people a new tool to engage them with reading on their own terms.
We've also been very busy listening to young people and getting them involved in their local libraries. Young people are choosing books, designing library spaces, organising training for librarians and even deciding what gets served in cafes. (Yes, you did read that correctly - you'll have to read about HeadSpace.)
"With HeadSpace we'll be having things like weekly night sessions where you can play music, and drama workshops and there will be youth workers you can talk to confidentially. It's very different from an old-fashioned, quiet library!" Lowell Fachau, aged 14 from Lyme Regis
*Souce: National Literacy Trust 2005 survey of over 8,000 pupils.