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| Batman's Superhero Picnic at Wollaton Hall - an event with razamataz. Image courtesy of NCC. |
Since I started my scholarship I’ve been reading, researching, learning, emailing and meeting people for coffee about literacy in the UK and the US. It’s been a journey and a half already and I haven’t gone much further than Strelley yet – trips to Eastwood, Rotherham and Hoxton in North London are in the pipeline before I jet off in just over two months. This process has given me time to look at what we’re already doing in Nottingham, good practice in other parts of the UK and the exciting and unique way some projects in America are dealing with low literacy levels in specific areas and communities. With all this in mind, and the open ethos of the Roosevelt scholarship to allow your research to develop away from your initial idea, I’ve been able to move the goal posts a bit with what I’m going to be doing in America and how I hope it’ll benefit Nottingham!
First things first – less school. Schools and teachers don’t need me going off to the States to tell them how to do the amazing job they’re already doing. Teachers may need a conduit to share directly with literacy leads in school the latest guidance from the NLT or EEF, CPD opportunities or projects that school can get involved such as the amazing work of the Literacy Volunteers, Reading Recovery or Switch On, which is working really well in the county – and part of the implementation of the research when I come back could involve this being something we implement. They don’t need a jumped up, non-teaching trained clod telling them that what they’re doing isn’t what they do across the pond. Good classroom practice may be encountered in schools but I think it has to be in-school support programmes and community engagement that is my real focus – certainly this is where all the work that I’ve done in my education work in arts, outdoor and literacy fields. I think it just took me the time of looking at it all to realise that this is something which is valuable and can engage with young people in a way classroom based work can’t. I hope one day that these strands will stand as equals and innovative approaches are recognised as hugely beneficial in developing skills and, super importantly, confidence.
I’m writing this after a day back working at the BrockleHigh Centre in Bilborough running their out of school holiday club and I spent much of today (between making rounds of toast for hungry young people and defusing the bust ups you inevitably get when children are thrown together in any context) surreptitiously asking the kids attending today whether they’d brought a book with them - none had; whether they liked reading - none did; and what they thought of “literacy” at school - “boring” was the standard response. Despite this, these were intelligent, articulate young people aged from 8 to 15 who in the group of about 60 included some bi-lingual in French, Portuguese, Polish and Russian, yet to talk to them about books and a switch is tripped. This study has to be something which genuinely engages the switched off and, as someone with a theatre background, I think that this has to be via razamataz (technical term).
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| In the stocks at Nottingham Castle, exactly where I wanted to put some of the children today! Image courtesy of NCC. |
Looking at projects that have this wow factor and jazz hands approach in the States has given me far more food for thought about what we can do and achieve in Nottingham than just visiting schools and asking them what works. With this in mind I’ve re-jigged elements of the trip, although it broadly follows the same route, to refocus onto this. Of course, I’ll still connect with the folks in Iowa City (our sister City of Lit) and Taos (where DH Lawrence lived for a while) but my trips to discuss playwriting at universities on my trip has taken a firm back seat and my time in school might be just a day or two on each week stop as I focus on community settings, organisations that go into schools and projects which use means other than overt literacy to get kids reading. I’ve also been struck by something Sandy Mahal from City of Literature said to me a while ago about the ambitions of NCoL around young people’s literacy, which was “every child a reader, every child a writer” and I think it’s daft of me, as someone who probably identifies more as a writer than a reader, to neglect one in favour of the other. I will neglect the other R of ‘rithmetic but that’s because I’m rubbish at it.
This also all neatly ties into one of the most inspirational projects I’ve discovered/been told about by many people, although the sagacious Rick Hall was the first – the 826 network of stores selling esoteric things (from Blackbeard to Big Foot) as a social enterprise around literacy projects for under-resourced areas. On my trip, I plan to visit the New York (Superheroes), Washington DC (Magicians), Chicago (Secret Agents), LA (Time Travel) and San Francisco (Pirates) 826 programmes, plus London’s ACE funded Ministry of Stories (Monsters) and Rotherham’s new Grimm and Co. (Magical Alchemists) before I go. I really hope that as part of the report I deliver after the trip can include recommendations to make our very own version of this – perhaps themed after our own famous outlaw…
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| Children from Rufford Primary, Bulwell on residential at Newstead Abbey. Image courtesy of Rufford Primary. |
I also want to build on what Nottingham is already doing well at such as Outdoor Learning, with Bulwell being a national leader in Key Stage One Residentials (potentially blowing my own trumpet as I worked on this project but whatever) and green spaces with Nottingham named “the greenest city in the UK”. With projects like the Hoodwinked Schools’ Literacy Trail hopefully starting in the new school year around the exciting sculpture trail that the city will be having in 2018 and Dolly’s Imaginarium Library continuing, we have amazing things already happening and it might be remiss of me to not pop in to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee to say hello to Team Dolly. Looking at how we can use existing schemes, strengths and resources, such as those created by Nottingham City of Football, is my third adaption and I’ll be looking much more closely at Nottingham over the next month to really see where I can find allies and catalysts for any future work. I’m already speaking with University of Nottingham, the City Council, 1Nottingham, the City of Literature, Ignite! And Literacy Volunteers – plus have leads on a few others, but if you think of anyone, drop me a line.
All that this leaves me to say is thank you to everyone I’ve spoken to so far, everyone I will speak to over the next just over two months, all the children and young people I’ve hassled over their reading habits and the teachers about literacy strategies, to Nigel and Sandy who I’ve harangued for a bit of top up funding, to the scholarship for having faith in me pulling this all off and, as always and most importantly, Cáit for putting up with me – she really is the best.