Co-creating online literary resources to build a national future for reader volunteering and a real-world legacy of the Cultural Value Project.

This project builds on previous research by the Centre for Research into Reading, Literature and Society at the University of Liverpool (CRILS), 'Assessing the intrinsic value, and health and well-being benefits, for individual and community, of The Reader's Volunteer Reader Scheme' (CRILS CVP).
The study focused on a volunteer programme, which engaged people at risk of, or suffering from, mental health difficulties, isolation and unemployment. Examining every aspect of TR's volunteer experience - from participating in, to leading, a community reading group - the report concluded that the chief well-being benefits were: increased sense of purpose in life and of personal worth through shared literary reading; an active sense of belonging and of acceptance within a personalised community ethos; renewed belief in the value of one's work and contribution; a sense of the social as an inherent value, beyond overcoming deficit (such as loneliness). This follow-on project will spread the opportunities and benefits of The Reader's Volunteer Scheme (RVS) as widely and economically as possible, while maintaining the quality, richness and depth of the individual reader volunteer experience evidenced by the CRILS CVP study. In relation to reading literature for psychological health and development, its mission closely corresponds to the wider Cultural Value Project's recommended priority of 'creating the context and conditions for change' through cultural engagement and active citizenship.
The follow-on activities proposed have three major strands, designed to enable the successful national roll-out of a reader volunteer model, which to date has been centred in the North-West and London.
1.To use the learning and evidence from CRILS CVP to collaborate with The Reader (TR) in producing online digital literary learning resources. We will co-create with TR training films in which CRILS will activate research findings in relation to literature from diverse periods, modelling skills in careful reading. Excerpts from reading groups - newly-filmed as well as selected from audio-video recordings generated as part of the original research data - will offer insights into group dynamics. A short publicity film will also be made to introduce potential volunteers and partners to the value of shared reading. It is essential for lasting impact that these films are attractively innovative and of the highest quality in order to attract interest and educated involvement.
2.To work closely with TR to consolidate its existing partnerships with the public sector (NHS, local government and library services) and develop new collaborative working (with third and corporate sector organisations). The aim of these partnerships will be to identify local champions committed to growing and embedding reader volunteering. By thus harnessing the assets of local communities in disseminating and embedding the use and value of these resources, the project will ensure that, as the volunteering initiative spreads nationally, it also remains locally-led, in the hands of those who are closest to, and understand best, the needs of local communities.
3.To use and refine evaluation methods developed in CRILS' original CVP research in order robustly to assess the beneficiary outcomes of individual volunteer experience within shared reading. Specifically, we will implement the explicit recommendations arising from CRILS' CVP report as to the most sensitive outcome measures for reporting benefit and test them across a broad population of beneficiaries. In so doing, we will also align our follow-on project with one of the key emphases of the AHRC's full Cultural Value Project report - namely the importance of embedding multi-criteria evaluation within arts' practice. The model, its methods and resources and the evaluation thereof, will be available to other organisations which partner.

The primary beneficiaries of this project's activities will be:
1.Those volunteers enabled, via new digital online resources co-produced with TR, to become reading-group leaders, trained and supported to read within their communities and/or within their organisations (health, corporate, third-sector). (Lack of access to inexpensive quality training is the chief barrier to the spread of such volunteering opportunity.) TR hope to train 930 Reader Leaders over the next 3-5 years. The new flexible digital training will allow volunteers to identify target groups or sectors and start their practice while still learning.
2.The reading-group participants who will attend the new reading groups set up by Reader Leaders, and be able to become Reader Leaders themselves. It is envisaged that 7000 readers will be reached by 2020, with emphasis on recruiting people from vulnerable groups: those at risk of social isolation and poor mental wellbeing; older people and individuals living with dementia; looked after children. Thousands of people will benefit from the increased connectivity, renewed sense of meaning, and improved psychological wellbeing which CRILS' Cultural Value Report evidenced in relation to the small volunteer cohort which began this scheme. Without the volunteering scheme, there will be no shared reading in many facilities where it is needed and valued but not affordable.
3.Local communities and organisations, which, as current collaborators or new partners will be encouraged by online dissemination to take up the project or reproduce their own version, during and beyond its lifetime. The suite of training and support provided by the project will extend to a wide range of organisations the opportunity to embed shared reading and its associated benefits within their systems, businesses and communities, either via existing employees who access the training, or through appointment of local volunteer organisers who can identify local needs, recruit Reader Leaders and set up groups. The range of such potential beneficiaries include: in health, 151 Public Health Departments, 52 NHS mental health trusts, 211 Clinical Commissioning groups, who are under intense pressure to meet the needs of the 1 in 4 people suffering mental health issues and deal with the epidemics of depression and dementia; within local authorities, 151 library services, who are seeking ways to renew their meaningful service long-term to communities. In addition, partners in the corporate sector will have access to an innovative solution for improving the wellbeing of employees. Those in the third sector - including volunteer organisations aimed at improving community cohesion and integration (The Challenge, RSVP), support groups for specific populations (Alzheimer's Society, Phoenix Futures), and other reading charities (The Reading Agency, National Literacy Trust, BookTrust) - will be able to incorporate shared reading within their provision.
The project will allow shared reading to make the breakthrough to national (and, given TR's affiliated organisations in Denmark, Finland, Germany, Belgium, potentially international) scale, and provide what has been called 'community glue' - analogous to the commonality and comfort once offered by churches or social clubs - across a society increasingly marked by division in recent times. The project will also secure sustainability, based not on external funding but on human dedication, for a model of social movement known (via the original CRILS CVP research) to enhance individual and social wellbeing. As the project's aims are directly in line with the NHS Five Year Forward View, which recommends social movements as key to realising the 'renewable energy of communities' in health improvement, the project will attract attention from Public Health, NHS UK, Arts Council England/Wales/NI and Creative Scotland, as evidencing the contribution of arts/humanities to the wellbeing of the population.