Executive summary
‘Reading Round the World’ Outside In World’s flagship project was launched on World Book Day 2009.
(You can download this document here)
This executive summary introduces the project and outlines its aims, key statistics and achievements, learning points, examples of anecdotal evidence, examples of workshop formats and activities, and recommendations for continuing to achieve maximum impact in this field in the future.
‘Reading Round the World’ was developed with the specific aim of responding to children’s lack of exposure to books from other countries by delivering a programme of innovative, fun and highly interactive events across the UK.
Events aimed to explore books from all over the world, particularly books in translation. Events also promoted cross-cultural awareness and understanding and, importantly, did not just introduce children to the books themselves, but also to their creators, by bringing international artists from a range of countries around the world into children’s classrooms to interact and engage with UK audiences.
Summary of key statistics and achievements
Examples of key statistics:
The original programme aimed to hold at least 18 events around the UK. However, the final number of events held was 43. Much of this ‘snowballing’ effect was due to growing interest in the programme and successful partnership working (see Learning Points below).
Events were held in a wide range of geographical areas, including Cornwall, East Sussex, Hampshire, Kent, London, Middlesex, Somerset and Surrey.
The programme successfully reached children of all ages, from five to 18. Settings were diverse and included schools, school libraries, public libraries and innovative venues such as the Eden Project in Cornwall and the British Airways Community Learning Centre near Heathrow.
The programme successfully engaged children with a very broad range of interests, abilities and backgrounds, and OIW was proactive in ensuring that the programme actively involved several groups who might otherwise miss out on such opportunities, including looked after children and disabled children.
Although the majority of events took place in schools, OIW were also successful in ensuring that the types of school given this opportunity were equally diverse including inner-city schools with large populations of children whose first language was not English, schools in deprived areas where there were learning and behavioural problems, mainstream schools with special needs and children and young people in care.
Although the primary aim of the programme was to reach children, ‘Reading Round the World’ also successfully held five events for the children’s book world, stimulating considerable interest, debate and discussion around translated children’s literature.
A typical ‘Reading Round the World’ event lasted for 90 minutes. Each event was different in content; however, all involved an introduction (by OIW staff) to the value of books from around the world, showing examples and helping to ‘set the scene’. All workshops also included the artist spending time helping the children to get to know his/her country and books, through readings (in both the original language and English), PowerPoint presentation, music, photographs, film and examples of culture and customs. Then most workshops developed into one or more innovative and interactive elements, led by the artist.
The response to the programme was felt to be exceptionally good, both from the children who participated in the events and from the adults who worked with them. Press coverage was also good, with articles appearing primarily in the local press for the relevant area, as well as several national websites.
The project also enabled OIW to dramatically enhance its website, by adding searchable databases of books, writers and illustrators and child-friendly images such as an interactive map of the world.
Examples of key learning points
Effective routes
Most of the events were organised in close liaison with local schools, school library services or local library services. The strength of these local partnerships was felt to be key to the project’s success.
OIW found that existing (prior) contact with such local partners and some familiarity with the organisation was key to ensuring events could be organised quickly and effectively. ‘Cold’ approaches to areas/schools often resulted in the potential school/library needing far longer to understand the aims of the organisation and to appropriately arrange and prepare the audience. Sometimes provisional events arranged with such new contacts even failed to materialise at all, with the venue pulling out, in one case at very short notice. As the programme developed, OIW began to be approached by new areas requesting workshops, and existing areas, enquiring about the possibility of repeat events.
Preparation of artists and audiences
Also vital was considerable pre-event planning and liaison with both artist and school/library.
OIW worked with each artist preparing the workshop format. They were each sent in advance of their visit to the UK a set of information, terms and conditions and the OIW Child Protection policy.
An information pack was prepared with all the details the artist would need for their visit and copies of the OIW policies were also included. A planning session with each artist was arranged before our events to go through the practicalities of their visit, the workshop format and the Child Protection policy.
Each of the management team had been CRB checked and some time was spent going through the policy and ensuring that they understood the basic points it contained.
The most successful OIW events were those which were tailor-made for the programme, taking into consideration the specific aims of the programme and the needs of the audience. On very rare occasions, artists were reluctant to change their ‘usual’ workshop approaches, and such events were felt to be slightly less effective than the majority which was planned from scratch.
Sufficient time was needed for the children to read the books prior to the event and familiarise themselves with the artist’s work, generating a sense of anticipation and excitement on the day itself. In some particularly successful cases, children had even developed projects and displays around the book/artist.
Reaching diverse audiences
OIW was keen to ensure that all children were given the benefit of experiencing the workshops and events, and developed specialist partners and carefully planned approaches to help us achieve this.
For example, OIW worked with FAB (Foster a Book) Cornwall, which proved invaluable in successfully reaching 24 children in care in Cornwall.
OIW also took an ‘inclusive’ approach to involving disabled children. As opposed to holding separate ‘special’ events for such audiences, disabled children were involved in our ‘mainstream’ workshops by particularly targeting some inclusive schools and ensuring that the content was particularly valuable to them. One of the successful international artists invited by OIW was a wheelchair user herself. Her disability was not referred to directly during the workshop, the aim being to provide a powerful role model for such disabled children, as well as sending an important message to non-disabled peers. Indeed, one of the participating schools commented:
“(The best thing about the workshop was) the opportunity to meet a real author from another culture, particularly someone who has overcome adversity – a great role model for our pupils.”
A teacher from Hounslow Heath Junior School.
Variety of approaches
The programme used a very wide range of methods to engage children. This was essential, given the broad range of ages, interests, backgrounds and abilities of the children involved. Workshops used art and craft activities, writing exercises, debates, interviews, film footage, music and even multi-sensory approaches to appeal to different audiences. The full report provides extensive details of the types of activities and approaches used.
Partnership working
OIW built on the Arts Council grant by successfully approaching several smaller partners.
Key partners included the British Airways Community Investment Fund for Hounslow, Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, Icelandic Literature Fund, Japan Society, Royal Embassy of Thailand, Swedish Arts Council and the Unwin Charitable Trust.
These partnerships were crucial to the programme achieving the greatest possible impact and value for money. For example, one of the many successful partnerships developed was with British Airways. Bringing over artists from as far as Thailand, Argentina and Japan was a costly exercise, so OIW approached British Airways through their Community Investment Fund. As well as providing additional support to run more workshops than our original target, this gave us use of their exceptionally appropriate facilities (the BA learning centre), allowed us to work with their staff and with UNICEF, and covered the costs of a number of the artists’ flights, enabling us to redirect precious funding back into more events and workshops.
Partnership funding from local authorities, literature festivals and corporate sponsors was extremely good, and in the case of one authority (East Sussex), OIW was even commissioned to run four full days of workshops by the local library authority. However, securing any funding from schools (the original plan had been to ask for a small contribution from each participating school) proved extremely challenging. Almost all schools stated that they were unable to provide a contribution. Thankfully we were able to cover this element of the budget through the additional funding secured from other partners.
Children’s interest in this field
Before running the workshops, OIW had on occasions been advised that children might not be able to relate to an international artist, especially if an interpreter was required. Likewise, questions were often raised about whether children would be interested in books that might be very different from the typical UK market.
In fact, all the workshops highlighted children’s very genuine interest in this area of children’s literature, particularly in terms of the whole concept of language. Children seemed to revel in the diversity of books from other countries, which were brought to the workshops. The children were also clearly fascinated to hear the original language. For example, in one of the workshops run with Lluís Farré, one boy even managed to identify that Lluís’ voice changed in tone as he read the Catalan and Spanish. Another boy, who had severe behavioural problems and who initially clearly had difficulties concentrating, asked if he could stand up in front of the entire class and read a sentence in Catalan, to the amazement of the teachers.
In the case of the event with Ulf Stark, which involved over 100 children, the artist chose to speak in his native language with an interpreter, which could have proved challenging. However, the feedback received from the librarians showed that the children enjoyed the event and were not put off by the need for the artist to be translated. When working with a Japanese artist, OIW was able to use her lack of confidence in English to our advantage, by working with several schools where the students were learning Japanese and therefore delighted to have the opportunity to speak with her in her original language.
Adult events
The addition of several events aimed at adults was felt to be particularly valuable, as it helped to raise greater awareness of issues around children’s books in translation amongst publishers, booksellers, teachers, students and organisations.
The adult events explored fascinating themes around a variety of issues such as:
Examples of workshop formats and activities
As mentioned above, each workshop contained several ‘core’ elements, such as the introduction to the subject, learning about language and culture, becoming more familiar with the artist and his/her work, etc. Then each one contained tailor-made, interactive and highly original activities, which were specific to the artist and the age, interests and abilities of the audience.
For example:
•The workshops with Thai author Jane Vejjajiva created a truly multi-sensory experience of Thailand. Incense was burned, fruit carvings were on display along with many different types of spices (lemongrass, galangal, ginger, coriander, chillies) and typical produce of Thailand. The artist talked to the children about food and gave them the chance to try items including Thai prawn crackers. Exploring her book, The Happiness of Kati, Jane talked to the children about the smells and asked them to close their eyes and imagine they were in Kati’s grandma’s kitchen!
•The workshops with Polish author Anna Mycek-Wodecki combined art and language. Anna drew her character ‘Minutka’ (a bilingual dog) on a flip chart and the children had fun naming all Minutka's body parts in English and then translating them into Polish. This gave the children an opportunity to discover how many body parts sound very much alike in Polish and English. The children were then given the opportunity to draw their own version of Minutka and their own favourite animal or pet. The children named the animals in English and Anna taught them the Polish word which they could either say or write on their drawing. The children were also able to use the drawing of Minutka to tell everyone about their language or other languages that they knew.
•The Workshops with Argentinean author and illustrator Pablo Bernasconi explored the unique way in which he creates his illustrations. Pablo explained how he was always collecting different things, often from junk shops, and mechanical items were often broken down to establish how they had been put together. He showed examples from The Wizard, the Ugly and the Book of Shame where the Wizard is made up of different objects such as a cheese grater, carrot and old scraps of material. The children's challenge was to create their own character in collage following the style of Pablo’s work. They were provided with a variety of different papers, fabrics, and other assorted materials to work with and Pablo went around the room giving encouragement and helping out with ideas.
•The workshops with Icelandic author Fridrik Erlings were with older students (Years 8 & 9). Two different types of writing activities were undertaken by each of the schools taking part. One group of students undertook to write a ‘slogan/title for the film Fish in the Sky. They were also asked who they thought should be cast in the various film roles. Another group were asked to write an ‘Internal Monologue’. The purpose of the exercise was to show one thing happing whilst the character is thinking about something else entirely. Outside, normal life carries on, but inside the character is in turmoil. The students could choose their own character and scenario or choose one of three examples provided.
Conclusion
The ‘Reading Round the World’ programme was considered to be an immense success. Our comprehensive evaluation suggests that the events were extremely well received and that more events and activities in this field would be valuable, for both child and adult audiences.
Updated 2022
