Raising Literacy levels across Essex has been a key priority for Essex Libraries over the past year. Not only have we installed an Everyone’s Literacy Area in 74 libraries and trained our staff in the benefits of our new stock for customers, but we also have a Literacy Lead and Community Connector team, who have initiated several new activities and programmes for the Essex community. Since January 2023, the team have attended 333 events, engaged with over 23,000 customers (of whom 14,000 were children), and have signed up 1550 new library members.

 

Building strong relationships with our partners has been key to our success this year. We have joined forces with the likes of the charities Read Easy, Shannon Trust and Trust Links, as well as public services such as Essex Police and the Fire Service. Essex Family Wellbeing Service, Adult Community Learning and local businesses such as Hopefield Animal Sanctuary and Colchester Zoo have also been extremely supportive of our work, allowing us to hold poetry competitions, workshops and story times on their sites and in collaboration with us in our libraries.

 

Everyone’s Literacy Areas

Brightlingsea, Feb 2023 –

 

“Children of a range of ages have enjoyed using the phonics magnet board a lot - making words and handling/saying/looking at the sounds. Customers have said that they particularly like having tactile elements in the Literacy Area. We have also enjoyed incorporating more phonics into Rhymetimes too as a follow on from this resource.”

 

One of our aims was to create Everyone’s Literacy Areas in 74 libraries, housing new stock that is aimed at developing readers and supporting literacy difficulties. Across these areas, a total of 50,053 books have been loaned between June 2022- June 2023. Highlighting particularly a demand for early phonics books and grammar support, as shown by the number of Actiphons and Word Adventure published titles that have been loaned.

 

Through linking with ACL tutors and Read Easy reading coaches, this area has provided adult students with support for reading for pleasure. The initiative has also created opportunities for volunteering across Essex, with reading support for adults and children, as well as Lego® in Libraries session leaders. So far, we have nine new volunteers across the county, with more being processed at the moment.

 

Schools have been pleased with the resources that we are offering to their children with literacy difficulties, commenting that they have appreciated the high interest low reading age stock.