WHAT ARE READING GROUPS

Over the past few years the popularity of Reading Groups has dramatically increased in the UK. In addition to the obvious context of Universities and language courses and as a compliment to study, Reading Groups have been embraced both as an audience marketing tool, a route to social improvement and also as a place to cultivate dialogue and discussion along distinct themes.

The Department of Culture, Media and Sport has recognised the importance of this area, awarding significant public funding to libraries and educational institutions to develop reading-focussed projects. In the commercial sector companies such as Orange or Sainsburys who originally supported Bookstart, the national book programme that provides books for every baby born in the UK, and many others have figured out the obvious: that readers are one of the largest available audiences and developing reading projects provides a quick and easy route to either widen audiences or select targeted audiences.

So what exactly is a reading group and how can the British Council use them?

Reading Groups vary dramatically and the nature of your group will depend on who it is aimed at. It might be that co-workers and colleagues in a British Council office might like to develop a group – a useful way of keeping in touch with what’s happening in the UK? Or it might be that the group is aimed at Young Learners and held within the library at weekends. It could be as simple as an informal gathering of a few friends, or a faciliator-led academic discussion aimed at textual analysis. enCompassCulture can provide you with book selection choices to suit all types of groups. We have a separate section with specific information for Teenage Reading Groups but the general guidlines below are also applicable to them as well.

Use the Reading Group Toolkit, which explains how to go about setting up a Reading Group;  organising the first meeting; managing the discussion; varying discussion management to suit the group; establish links between Reading Groups overseas and readers in the UK using enCompass; and how to choose and select books for the Reading Groups. Find out about the experiences of Tamara Filatova who started Reading Groups in Kazakhstan and Helena Kovarikova who has started Reading Groups in the Czech Republic in Starting a Reading Group.

Using enCompass you can access themed reading lists for your Reading Group such as:

• Literature and Science – current crossover thinking in-between these two areas can be explored using the Science Reading Compass

• Diaspora writing – Exiled writers, journalists and thinkers, living and writing in the UK are to be found on the UK Diversity Reading Compass
• Multiculturalism – For example, who does London belong to? Hanan al Shaykh’s Only in London provides a glimpse of a very unique London when read alongside Peter Ackroyd’s London: The Biography, and Diran Adebayo’s Some Kind of Black gives an overseas audience a glimpse into a a true sense of multicultural co-existence in one city – take a look at the UK Diversity Reading Compass or the World Reading Compass in the UK section
• Teaching Management through Literature – using fiction, poetry and drama to teach management principles.

Please follow the links below for more ideas.

Reading Group Ideas:

• Adult Reading Group Ideas
• Teenage Reading Group Ideas
• Children's Reading Group Ideas

• Creative Reading Projects in the UK and Where can I join a Reading Group? (will provide some useful ideas for your Reading Group)

• Reading Cities

• Readers Notes

• Reading Kits for Teachers

• The British Council has a Reader-centred Manifesto that you can read here: Under the Skin.