ASCEL: Libraries and co-production

Claire Styles: Programme Manager The Reading Agency ASCEL: Libraries and co-production

Project aims: • Support libraries to develop year-round youth co-production built on libraries’ Universal Reading Offer (URO); • Identify partnership opportunities with Bridges and arts organisations; • Increase awareness of relevant accreditation schemes and funding opportunities.

Why develop a year-round offer? Benefits for libraries: Engages the library users of the future Benefits young people; develops skills and community engagement Increases capacity to run key activities Contributes to community cohesion Raises library profile as a volunteer provider Helps libraries meet statutory duty

Statutory Guidance for Local Authorities Connect young people with their communities, enabling them to contribute to society, including through volunteering; Have a voice in decisions which affect their lives; Opportunities to take part in activities; Support personal and social development to build the capabilities they need for learning, work, and the transition to adulthood.

Why prioritise young people now? 17.5 million under 25s in the UK today 21.9% of under 25s unemployed 40% of young people volunteer 88% of youth media stories are negative Recession impacts disadvantaged disproportionately: 70% of excluded pupils have poor basic literacy. People with poor literacy least likely to be employed at 30 Reading for pleasure is the only out-of-school activity for 16s linked to securing managerial/ professional jobs

Benefits to young people • New skills and experience • For CV for education/ employment Recognition/ accreditation • Work experience • To meet new people/ for fun • To give something back • Incentives

Libraries’ youth volunteers, 2012 4,375 Summer Reading Challenge volunteers 728 Reading Activists running 24 hubs 950 World Book Night book givers

Calendar hooks

First hooks: World Book Day/ Night Join the Book Herd – WBD/N ambassadors Social networking and website teen resources written by young volunteers ‘Party pack’ of ideas being produced to become book givers Teen-friendly titles

Co-production - Approach underpinning Volunteering - Characteristics of co-production?

Co-production means… “… delivering public services in an equal and reciprocal relationship between professionals, people using services, their families and their neighbours. Where activities are co-produced in this way, both services and neighbourhoods become far more effective agents of change.”* (*Right here, right now: taking co-production into the mainstream, NESTA; July 2010)

Features of co-production: Recognising people as assets Building on people’s existing capabilities Mutuality and reciprocity Peer support networks Blurring distinctions Facilitating rather than delivering* (*Right here, right now: taking co-production into the mainstream, NESTA; July 2010)

Volunteering: plan and sustain

Accreditation

Fundraising and collaboration • Youth Voice funds • National Citizenship Service • vCashpoint • O2 ThinkBig • European Youth Programme

Using the URO as a framework, plan a year-round youth volunteer offer Consider: Volunteer role(s) for each hook Who you will work with How you could involve young people Timescales and milestones Resource implications Next steps

“Before being involved in Reading Activists, I would never have dreamed I could help organize author events or interview people, I would have been really scared and worried. There’s so many skills I’ve learnt, and things it’s opened me up to do, and I’m much better at reading now, and more confident all round. Having Padgate Library with Reading Activist opportunities stops kids hanging around on the street, and gets them to see what libraries can do for them”. Tom Hotson, 15, Reading Activist, Warrington

ASCEL: Libraries and co-production