Website: www.thereader.org.uk
Started: 2008
Based: Liverpool
Get Into Reading groups are the main outreach activity of The Reading Organisation. These sessions bring people together through weekly read aloud groups where members are invited to read and give personal responses in a relaxed and inclusive environment. Groups take place in a variety of locations including care homes, hospitals, prisons, homeless shelters, libraries, supermarkets, community centres and corporate board rooms.
The organisation now has over 300 weekly Get Into Reading groups meeting each week across the UK, along with events, publications, research and training in the UK and abroad. The Reader Organisation was founded by Jane Davis who left school at 16 with two GCSEs. Jane found refuge in books and after returning to education as a young single mother, she eventually gained a PhD from the School of English at the University of Liverpool.
In 1997, she co-founded the Reader magazine to share her love of reading, and set up the first Get Into Reading group in 2002 for a group of young single mums at a library in Birkenhead, Wirral. The Reader Organisation became an independent charity in 2008.