Reading for Wellbeing
The Reader Organisation’s Second National Conference
Tuesday 17th May 2011
Floral Pavilion, New Brighton, Wirral
“Get Into Reading helps patients suffering from depression in terms of: their
social well-being, by increasing personal confidence and reducing social isolation;
their mental well-being, by improving powers of concentration and fostering an
interest in new learning or new ways of understanding; their emotional and
psychological well-being, by increasing self-awareness and enhancing the ability
to articulate profound issues of self and being.” ‘Therapeutic Benefits of Reading in
Relation to Depression’, Billington et al., 2011
Who’s going to be there?
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Marilynne Robinson, Pulitzer Prize winning novelist for Gilead and
Orange prize winner for Home, who will talk about the personal impact of reading
on her life
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Professor Maryanne Wolf, internationally acclaimed author of
Proust and The Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain will talk on the
‘Pleasures and Perils of an Evolving Reading Brain’
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Professor Rick Rylance (Chair of the Arts and Humanities Research Council) will
discuss the role of reading and the arts in this age of austerity
Sue Charteris (Founder and Director, Shared Intelligence) talks libraries
Professor Philip Davis (Head of School of the Arts at the University of Liverpool)
and psychologist Professor Guillaume Thierry (University of Bangor) have new
findings on reading Shakespeare and brain-imaging
Get Into Reading group members: hear from the people we reach week-in,
week-out
What’s it all about?
With the growing success of our Reading Revolution, and its widening reach across a broad
range of services, the ‘Reading for Wellbeing’ conference will bring together 200 readers and
professionals to find out how literature can help people in their jobs, out in their
communities and in their own lives.
“Get Into Reading is one of the most significant developments
to have taken place in mental health practice in the last ten
years.” Psychiatrist of the Year 2009, Dr. David Fearnley (Medical Director,
Mersey Care NHS Trust)
Get Into Reading, our pioneering outreach project, has now been proven to increase its
members social, mental and emotional wellbeing. This success is due to the quality
of the literature, the skill of the facilitator and the environment in which the group takes
place. We have demonstrated that Get Into Reading works with some of the most
vulnerable and excluded people in society: prisoners, those in secure psychiatric settings,
children in care or excluded from school, those living with dementia and other age-related
conditions.
Among our current health partners are East London Mental Health Trust, Greater
Manchester West NHS, Halton PCT, Liverpool PCT, Mersey Care NHS Trust
and Wirral NHS. For a full list of our partners, click here.
Since the ‘New Beginnings’ conference in March 2010 we have:
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developed a Get Into Reading project in Wirral that delivers over 100
groups each week, reading with people aged 3-93;
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opened offices in London, Wigan, and Devon;
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delivered our training programme in Australia and Denmark;
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completed a research project with the University of Liverpool and
Liverpool Primary Care Trust into the relationship between shared
reading and depression;
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started a research project with the Home Office in prisons across the UK
to see if shared reading can help develop empathy;
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published our first book, A Little, Aloud;
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and continued our successful work with health, education and care
services.
Find out more about this work and our plans for the next three years at the conference.
Who should come?
The shared reading model means that our Reading Revolution reaches everyone: GPs;
occupational therapists; care home managers; dementia specialists; people who look after
fostered children; those that work in refugee centres; librarians; academics and teachers;
psychiatrists; business managers; readers.
Learn more about this rapidly expanding, efficacious work; be inspired by those it has made
a difference to; and be part of the conversation about its development in your field.
Is it affordable?
Yes. A place at the Reading for Wellbeing conference costs £90, which includes lunch and
refreshments.
For our trained facilitators the cost is £67.50 – and for Get Into Reading members it’s only
£45!
How do I book?
To book your place at the conference, please contact Claire Speer:
clairespeer@thereader.org.uk / 0151 794 2830.