Empowering communities through Reading Well: Insights from the Evaluation Team 

The Reading Well Community Champions programme, led by The Reading Agency, is piloting across four library authorities: Lancashire, Newcastle, Norfolk, and Suffolk. The initiative aims to improve health and wellbeing by fostering community engagement through reading, with a focus on addressing local health inequalities. We’re Professor Melanie Ramdarshan Bold, Dr Alison Waller and Rowena Seabrook, and as The University of Glasgow’s Evaluation Team, we’ve worked closely with each site to capture the impact of their work through creative and participatory methods. 

Each of the four sites is engaging with different community groups, tailoring their activities to what people want and need locally, using the Reading Well book collections that support readers to understand and manage their health and wellbeing using recommended reading.  

So far over 900 people have benefitted from attending local events, activity or outreach led by project coordinators and more than 20 community champion volunteers across the four pilots. Below are some highlights of their efforts, though these represent just a portion of the many initiatives underway: 

• In Lancashire, the team has embraced the power of creative expression by collaborating with a local spoken word poet for poetry writing workshops in schools. Their library events also extend to football-related activities aimed at reaching a wide range of young people. Lancashire are also targeting areas with higher levels of antisocial behaviour, using the Reading Well for teens list and events to foster engagement with libraries.   

• In Newcastle, the programme has set up a memory cafe at City Library for people with memory loss and their carers. These sessions are designed to introduce people to the library while engaging them in meaningful activities. They have also collaborated with Newcastle Carers, involving both primary and secondary age young carers. This group typically meet for games and discussions about the books, to foster a sense of belonging and access to the library as a community resource. 

• Norfolk is co-creating activities with the communities of North Walsham to meet local need. As a result, they’ve rebooted a grief cafe by putting more emphasis on craft-based activities. In addition, collaboration with the Perinatal Engagement Officer has led to activities with new parents. Alongside this, Norfolk has initiated healthy aging workshops and engaged primary school students and staff through library visits, ensuring that multiple generations are involved in wellbeing activities through reading. 

• Suffolk has established weekly reading sessions for people living with dementia and their carers and/or families, across three sites. These sessions offer consistency and comfort, providing a safe and supportive environment for individuals and their carers or family members. The focus on the groups also allows for targeted support where it is most needed, tapping into the benefits of reading for mental health and emotional wellbeing. 

As the Evaluation Team, our role has been to support these different sites in capturing the unique experiences and voices of their communities. We’ve facilitated creative methods workshops in each of the pilot sites empowering coordinators and community champions to collect their own evaluation data. We’ve introduced them to a tasting menu of non-traditional, inclusive data-collection tools such as graffiti walls, diagramming, creative responses, and postcards to the future self.  

These methods offer alternative ways for participants to express themselves, ensuring that voices from different communities are heard, especially those who might not feel comfortable with standard evaluation tools like surveys or interviews. We want to ensure that the data collection is grounded in local knowledge and truly reflects the experiences of those involved. The pilot sites are rich with local expertise, and our role has been to provide the tools that allow these voices to shine.  

As part of the evaluation process, we have also interviewed the four project coordinators across each site. These interviews highlighted both challenges and opportunities within the pilot. For example, many coordinators have previously worked within these same communities, building trust and familiarity, and thereby making them highly responsive in tailoring strategies to local needs. Primary challenges across all sites, however, have been in sustaining consistent participation and in recruiting volunteers – common issues in event organisation and especially for coordinators facing the demanding task of managing multiple project elements on part-time working patterns.   

Through our evaluation work to date, we have learned that a uniform approach cannot meet the distinct needs of each community. Instead, strategies must account for regional and community-specific contexts, affirming that the programme’s adaptive, community-driven framework is integral to its success. 

We look forward to the next phase of the evaluation, which will include conducting focus groups with the community champion volunteers. 

The Reading Well Community Champions pilots forms part of a wider two-year Reading Well activation programme, funded by Arts Council England, amplifying engagement with people at risk of health inequalities across England.