MyVoice Roadshow in detail

Working in partnership with library services and us, young people were responsible for the creative content, programming, promotion, running and evaluation of their own MyVoice Roadshow event and online programme. Young people were responsible for creating a day-long programme of events, workshops and displays for other young people including consulting with publishers. They were encouraged to get inspiration and ideas for their programme from librarians, and literature and creative organisations.

Each roadshow was a mixture of workshops, performances and 'pop-up' displays that took place over one day. Along the way they learnt new skills in digital, design, event management and marketing to their peers.

The MyVoice Roadshow took place in:

• Weymouth Library, Dorset
• Great Yarmouth Library, Norfolk
• St Helens Central Library, St Helens
• Sunderland City Library and Arts Centre, Sunderland
• Church Street Library, Westminster

Young peoples' co-ordinating groups

The roadshow was organised by co-ordinating groups of young people connected to each library service. They met during the lead-up period to their event and were responsible for:

• Programming their roadshow event (selected artists from local and national partnerships for workshops, performances, exhibitions)
• Managing a delegated budget with the library services
• Producing digital content
• Marketing the event on and off line
• Actively supported the evaluation of the project.

We provided the MyVoice online space where the groups could get ongoing support, advice and have conversations with each other. We also provided the young people with training through our partners Sounddelivery that included developing digital skills; programming and promotion (marketing, social media); and managing events.

MyVoice Roadshow online

Online the MyVoice Roadshow was very active and included:

• young people blogging about featured artists and interviews with writers;
• interviews with creative professionals about being involved with MyVoice;
• updates and news;
• live blogging from the events and workshops.

There were also features on the creative industries which included advice and guidance on further training, plus local literature and creative organisations for young people. And we were very lucky to have fantastic, active online blogs, comments and creative content from our online writer in residence, Bali Rai.

See the digital content created by young people at the Roadshow on the MyVoice blogsite

Back to MyVoice programme

MyVoice is a new programme shaped and led by young people.

Here you can get an overview of the MyVoice programme and find out more about the MyVoice Roadshow.

MyVoice will open up creative reading and writing opportunities to 30,000 disadvantaged young people aged 11 to 19 in England who would not usually use their library. MyVoice will get them involved in their local branches and youth spaces by choosing books for their peers, managing a budget, interviewing staff and developing ideas online.

Working with libraries to create opportunities for young people

We are delighted to be able to launch MyVoice, working with 20 library authorities in four regions across England. At a time of great pressure on libraries, this is a heartening vote of confidence for their vital community work. With our library partners, we'll also be able to create 6,000 new volunteering opportunities that will be part of accredited award schemes and support links into employment and apprenticeships for young people in the areas of creative writing and literacy.

Library services are planning to work with young people from Roma communities, Not in Education, Employment and Training (NEET), Pupil Referal Units (PRUs), Looked After Children (LAC), Black Minority Ethnic Communities (BME), Young Offender Institutions (YOI), teenage parents and young people excluded from school as part of this programme. Young people will work with library services to create reading promotions for other young people and advise on book, DVD, games and CD purchasing.

The goal is to encourage better life chances through a programme of training and life skills development, building on research that confirmed reading for pleasure improves people's skills whilst increasing their motivation to read and learn.

We know from research by the National Research and Development Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy, that reading for pleasure improves people's skills whilst increasing their motivation to read and learn more.

What we are planning to do

• Six thousand young people will work with libraries, schools and youth clubs to manage existing reading spaces and develop 60 new reading spaces - Reading Hubs.
• An additional 6000 young people each year will take part in 20 MyVoice creative writing and reading events across the country to encourage other young people to join in.
• We will run MyVoice roadshows offering 20 young people (five from each region) the chance to express their opinions, mentored by professional writers.
• There will be 6000 local and national volunteering opportunities that support young people to get involved in all aspects of planning and running library spaces and activities.
• All 20 library services will run a programme of 38 events/activities (760 in total) planned, promoted, run and co-produced by young people.
• At least 30,000 young people will visit the MyVoice website and 6000 young people will publish their work on the website and use it to run and promote projects such as book festivals, poetry competitions.

MyVoice Roadshow

MyVoice Roadshow is a reading and writing roadshow led by and for young people. It will provide a model for getting young people fired up and excited by reading, writing and getting involved in their communities and will be the first roadshow of its kind in England.

There will be five day-long events comprising of a mixture of workshops, exhibitions and performances focused around reading and writing during 23 to 30 July 2011 at five library venues.

The roadshows will be targeted at, and co-produced, programmed and promoted by, creative yet disadvantaged young people who would not normally engage with the arts or literature.

If you an an arts or youth organisation, a creative business or a publisher, and you would like to get involved in the MyVoice Roadshow you can download the MyVoice Roadshow briefs which tell you more from Resources on the right hand side of this page.

Get in touch or read more about MyVoice Roadshow.

Participating libraries

We are delighted to be working to support the work that the following libraries do with young people through MyVoice.

London
Ashburton Library, Croydon
Shoreditch Library, Hackney
CentreSpace, Hounslow
Pollards Hill Library, Merton
Sutton Central Library, Sutton
Church Street Library, Westminster

North East
Gateshead Central Library, Gateshead
Newcastle City Library, Newcastle
Cleadon Park Library, South Tyneside
City Library & Arts Centre, Sunderland

North West
Halton Lea Library, Halton
Morecambe Library, Lancashire
Central Library, St Helens
Padgate Library, Warrington
Oldham Library Service

South East
Lord Louis Library, Isle of Wight
Kent Library Service
Carnegie Library, Portsmouth

Background

A large part of MyVoice has grown out of our Headspace project, funded by BIG until April 2010 by the Young Persons National grants programme.

Summer Reading Champions Elle Cross and Chloe Price at Woodrow Library in Worcestershire volunteered for 148 hours.

Summer Reading Challenge volunteering programme 2011

"This experience has been fantastic. I felt incredibly welcome and would encourage anyone to volunteer with the library or the Summer Reading Challenge - it may be fun for one summer or it may be the start of enjoying volunteering for a long time to come." Beth Stacey, 17, Worcester

The first results are in for the Summer Reading Challenge volunteering programme that was supported by the John Laing Charitable Trust in 50 pilot authorities. 1361 young volunteers aged 12 to 24 years took part against a target of 1000. This was a significant increase on our first pilot volunteering scheme last year and we plan to roll it out to all library authorities next year. 96.4% of volunteers said they learnt new things and gained skills and experience through volunteering. 81.0% of volunteers said they would like to keep volunteering in a library after the Summer Reading Challenge finished while 81.6% of library authorities have offered volunteers opportunities to continue volunteering, with offers made to at least 755 volunteers.

Summer Reading Challenge volunteering programme 2010

This summer we ran a major new partnership between the reading agency and v, (the national youth volunteering charity) and John Laing Integrated Services to enable young volunteers to support the Summer Reading Challenge. v and John Laing both agreed to fund a pilot Summer Reading Challenge volunteering programme for 16 to 25 year olds during 2010 with 20 partner library authorities, v ran an online recruitment campaign on their v-Inspired website and we offered training and guidance to libraries.

Our vision is to encourage all library services to offer youth volunteering through the Challenge by 2012.

We were delighted by the results that had 634 young volunteers working as role models on the Summer Reading Challenge, against our target of 250. You can read the full report on the Summer Reading Challenge volunteering project here.

"Volunteering has not only been a truly rewarding experience but it has taught me a lot about myself. I didn't know I had these skills and it has ignited my passion for working with children." Shani Grandison-Mills, 21, Grove Park Library, Lewisham

Volunteering for under 16s

Several authorities already involve under 16s in Challenge volunteering. You can use the guidance pack that we'll be sending out with this age group. However, for child protection reasons, the main v-Inspired website is open to 16 to 25s only. From April, v will be launching a new safer schools-based volunteer recruitment site for 14 to 15 year-olds. We are in discussions with v about how libraries can be involved with this, probably through SLSs. We will provide further guidance in the spring.

Background

Evidence from our young people's programmes shows that youth volunteering leads to increased skills, confidence and employment. Volunteers and 'buddies' already provide invaluable support to the Challenge in many authorities, enriching the offer to children and creating capacity for additional events and activities. Involving young volunteers has a positive impact on younger children's attitudes to reading. In 2009, 55 library services engaged volunteers to support the Challenge, over 500 of which were aged 16 to 25. Local authority requirements to provide volunteer experiences give you the opportunity to demonstrate your contribution to National Indicator 6. Volunteering is also a key element of the national Library Offer for young people.

MLA will be running generic volunteer seminars about community volunteering for the 2012 Olympics over the summer, which will complement the training and development of Challenge volunteering. Training for the Challenge project will take place in February/March.

The benefits to your libraries of offering volunteer accreditation include a structure for developing meaningful positive activities, quality assurance and the possibility of accessing new partnerships and funding streams.

Use the Accreditation Handbook (PDF) to think about why you might accredit, the types of accreditation that would best suit young people and your service, who to work with and how to get started.

Through our work on HeadSpace and Fulfilling their Potential, we have negotiated an agreement with the four main accrediting bodies so that library volunteering activities are recognised as contributing to their awards.

Depending on the accreditation award you would like to offer young, download details about a particular award:

• Duke of Edinburgh (PDF)
• Youth Challenge and Youth Achievement Awards (PDF)
• Getting Connected (PDF)
• ASDAN (PDF)

Use the direct url addresses you have been given to download the resources that support any other Participate modules you have purchased or get in touch with Claire Styles to purchase more Participate modules.

Back to Involving Young People main page
Back to Making Change Happen home page.

Share your experiences of running Participate at the Participate forum.

This section of Involving Young People focuses on the practicalities of developing young people's volunteering within your service.

The Volunteering Handbook (PDF) is a guide to help you to think through all aspects of developing volunteering opportunities for and with young people. It includes information on:

• Developing a volunteering policy
• Legal requirements including CRB checking
• Creating volunteer roles
• Volunteer recruitment and training
• Volunteer recognition and progression

Use the Volunteering templates (Word) for sample documents to help you to risk assess, recruit and sustain positive volunteer relationships with young people.
* Templates include:
* Sample volunteer policy
* Risk assessment
* Developing volunteer roles
* Promoting and recruiting volunteer roles
* Volunteer application form, induction checklist and agreement

Use the direct url addresses you have been given to download the resources that support any other Participate modules you have purchased or get in touch with Claire Styles to purchase more Participate modules.

Back to Involving Young People main page
Back to Making Change Happen home page.

Share your experiences of running Participate at the Participate forum.

"One thing that builds confidence is the feeling that you're being listened to. Here [at Haslingden] there is a feeling of satisfaction because we are listened to." Young person, HeadSpace Haslingden

Welcome to web based resources for Involving Young People; one of the modules of the new Participate programme which your authority has subscribed to. Use Involving Young People resources in conjunction with Making Change Happen.

Involving Young People gives you access to:

• Consultancy support to help you develop and sustain a youth-centred approach
• Seminars exploring Consultation and Decision-making; Volunteering and Accreditation;
• Online tools and resources to help you implement change
• Shared learning through the Participate forum

Follow the links below to download the resources that support Involving Young People. These are split into three sections:

• Involving Young People (download from the Resources colunm on this page)
• Youth volunteering
• Youth accreditation

Share your experiences of running Participate at the Participate forum.

Getting started

Involving Young People helps you apply successful young people's involvement, demonstrated initially through targeted work. Download the Why Involve Young People (PDF) from this page for the rationale and resulting outcomes for young people, library services and partners when you involve young people in your service.

Developing Youth Participation (PDF) outlines key partners, critical success factors and tough questions to ask yourself when embarking on youth participation work.

Youth Involvement Methods (PDF) describes the excellent Youth Involvement Model which you can use to shape a broad participation offer for young people. It includes practical ideas and approaches to achieving this in your authority. Download Tips for library makeovers (PDF) to help you when planning library spaces with young people.

Use the Evaluation Handbook and Project Planning template from Making Change Happen to help you develop your initial focus and decide how you will evaluate progress and youth participation.

Back to Making Change Happen.

Use the Evaluation Handbook (pdf) to:

• Think about what you need to evaluate, why and how
• Plan and demonstrate youth involvement, including using What's Changed
• Gather and review evidence, using creative methods which will engage young people
• Think about how to use the evidence you gather to create strong advocacy messages and widen support from stakeholders and partners.

Use the Evaluate, Review, Advocate (pdf) guide to help you to think through key issues in planning and getting the most out of your evaluation and to think about advocacy messages to young people, staff, partners and other stakeholders.

Use the Staff Skills Questionnaire (Word) to audit staff skills and confidence in working with young people at the beginning and again at the end of your Particpate work.

Use the direct url addresses you have been given to download the resources that support any other Particiapte modules you have purchased or get in touch with Claire Styles to purchase more Participate modules.

Back to Making Change Happen home page.

Share your experiences of running Participate at the Participate forum

Doing the Groundwork (pdf) is a guide to help you to lay strong foundations for your practical planning with young people. It includes information on:

• Strategic ownership and business planning
• Establishing outcomes and an evaluation strategy
• Auditing staff and creating a staff development programme
• Partnership opportunities (also covered in the Strategic Planning section of Making Change Happen)
  

Building on your experience through HeadSpace and regional FtP projects, we have developed guidance and resources to help you to develop good practice in planning and managing a focus activity to test your learning and use as the basis to roll out new approaches across your service. You can use the Project Planning Template (Word) to help you develop your project planning.

See the Critical Success Factors checklist (pdf) which describes the key elements that we have found from experience are needed to get your participation work with young people and partners on track and keep it going.

To help you with your evaluation strategy we have developed a comprehensive Evaluation Handbook (pdf) which includes:

• the characteristics of good evaluation
• qualitative and quantitative evaluation methods
• how to measure the outcomes for your service and for young people (including those who are socially excluded)
• practical, fun and creative tools to measure outcomes for young people.

Use the Staff Skills Questionnaire (Word) to audit staff skills and confidence in working with young people at the beginning and again at the end of your Particpate work.

For good practice in evaluating your youth involvement work we recommend the National Youth Agency's What's Changed tool

Use the direct url addresses you have been given to download the resources that support any other Particiapte modules you have purchased or get in touch with Claire Styles to purchase more Participate modules.

Back to Making Change Happen home page.

Share your experiences of running Participate at the Participate forum

Primarily, this section provides you with information about:

• the wider policy context for youth involvement
• the values and culture you will need to adopt in order to effectively embed young people's participation
• how to develop effective partnerships to support young people's involvement in your service

It also includes practical tools such as the Participate Improvement Framework (Word) (a tool to assess current levels of provision and identify priorities for service improvement) and a Staff Skills Questionnaire (Word) to help you to audit staff development needs.

The Policy and Context (pdf) document outlines how your work with young people can help you to meet policy agendas such as Youth Matters, Every Child Matters and Aiming High. It covers Local Authority PSAs and NIs that are relevant to this work and includes information about the Library Offer to Young People. It includes information about how involving young people in your service can open up new sources of funding.

By working through Values and Culture (pdf) you will gain an understanding of the core values of Hear By Right (the National Youth Agency's standards framework which informs Participate). Assess levels of youth involvement against Hart's Ladder of Participation. Values and Culture also reflects on outcomes for young people and the community.

The Partnership Working (pdf) document will help you to identify and articulate your youth offer with key partners. It also addresses partnership agreements and evaluating success.

Use the direct url addresses you have been given to download the resources that support any other Particiapte modules you have purchased or get in touch with Claire Styles to purchase more Participate modules.

Back to Making Change Happen home page.

Share your experiences of running Participate at the Participate forum

"When young people are involved in the design and delivery of services, they are more likely to access them and sustain their participation." Aiming High for young people, DCSF 2008

Welcome to web based resources for Making Change Happen; the first module of the new Participate programme. As a Participate authority, you have free access to this module.

Follow the links below to download the resources that support the Making Change Happen module. Resources are split into three sections to make them easier to work through:

Strategic Planning
Practical Planning
Evaluate, Review, Advocate

Share your experiences of running Participate at the Participate forum

Making Change Happen gives you access to:

• Consultancy support to help you plan, develop and sustain a more youth-centred approach
• Seminars for senior managers to explore Values and Culture; and Leadership and Partnership.
• Online tools and resources to help you implement change
• Opportunities to share learning with other Participate authorities

Making Change Happen helps you embed the values of successful young people's participation across your service, demonstrated initially through targeted work. It supports you to nurture vital partnerships and discover new funding and policy opportunities to make your development sustainable.

We are very aware that parents are any child's first and most enduring educators. There's plenty of research which shows how important parents are for their children's learning and development. Where parents are involved in their children's learning, children do better at school.1

For all children, the quality of the home learning is more important for intellectual and social development than parental occupation, education or income, according to a report from the Department for Education and Skills2

One of the best things parents can do to support their children is to read together at home. This starts with babies. Parents who introduce their babies to books give them a head start in school.3 It continues as children grow, with reading aloud, sharing books and much loved bedtime stories. Research shows that parental involvement continues to be important well into the teenage years and even into adulthood.4

Librarians, teachers, early years workers, family learning tutors and others concerned with education and child development know what a difference reading makes. So to support everyone working with families, we have developed a range of offers to help libraries to engage families in reading.

Our programmes for families:

• The Big Book Share - using reading to bring together families separated by imprisonment.
• The Six Book Challenge - helping adults with literacy needs to gain confidence with reading, and being used successfully in a growing number of family settings, as a focus for children and adults to grow their reading together.
• The Summer Reading Challenge - the biggest national promotion of children's reading through libraries. An ideal way to engage families to support their children and expand their reading too.
• Chatterbooks - reading groups for four to 12 year-olds, which offer a great way to involve parents too.
• groupthing.org - online reading groups for young people aged 11 up to 18
• Family Reading groups - where adults and their children can come together to share and build their reading experiences.
• Training opportunities - we offer a range of training courses which support libraries and their partners in working with families - see our training page for current offers.

"Libraries are just totally different for my children than for when I was a child - you weren't allowed to speak! If you go to our library over the summer, adult customers can barely move for children rushing around looking at books, cutting and sticking and making things. I think that's really good." Debbie Jarrett, Yaxley library, Cambridgeshire

1. (Fan & Chen, 2001); (Feinstein & Symons, 1999), (Melhuish, Sylva, Sammons et al., 2001).
2. Sylva,K., Melhuish,E., Sammons,P., Siraj-Blatchford,I. & Taggart, B. (2004). Effective provision of pre-school education (EPPE) project: Final Report. London: DfES.
3. (Wade & Moore, 2000).
4. (Desforges & Abouchaar, 2003).

The report on phase one of this project is now available and you can download it from Resources.

We are aiming to achieve this by:

• encouraging young people in youth groups and other settings to read more
• supporting activities that encourage young people in youth groups and other setting to read more
• getting young people involved in choosing reading materials
• developing projects with librarians and youth workers that get young people reading more
• spreading the word about the most effective ways of getting young people reading more.

Six projects in Dorset, Portsmouth, Stockton, Hertfordshire, Lancashire and Norfolk are currently testing the Out of the Box approach. The plan is to learn from their experience so that by the end of March 2009 we will have increased our understanding about what works and does not work.

In particular we are looking at:

• how librarians and youth workers can work in partnership
• how opportunities can be developed for young people in non-formal setting
• pracitcal ways to get young people interested in reading, including through groupthing our new website for young people
• how reading can support informal education opportunities
• if librarians, youth workers and young people's have different attitudes to reading
• if reading activities are a sustainable way of supporting informal education
• if there are any pre-requisits for things working (or, indeed, not working)

We'd love to hear from you if you are running or have run any reading based projects with young people. If you have any case studies or reports please email them to outofthebox@readingagency.org.uk

Download the report on phase one from Resources and check back for more information soon as we enter phase two.

Participate will help you deliver on the national Youth Offer and give you a clear direction on your own reading offer to young people across your library service. It will help you demonstrate libraries' key contribution to local authority targets around positive activities, volunteering and work with excluded groups.

Participate offers expert consultancy, seminars and brand new resources based on current government policy and national indicators including:

• service-wide strategic business planning
• identifying new funding streams
• fundamental culture change across your library service
• demonstrating your contribution to key LAA targets
• increasing youth participation
• developing staff skills
• introducing new youth-led services, like HeadSpace and groupthing.org
• exclusive access to online resources.
  
  We are now recruiting for the next Participate programme. If you are interested in being part of the next round please contact Sue Jones.

To find out more download the further information from Resources. There's information for public library authorities and for authorities that are already running HeadSpaces.

Other support for young people

Participate is part of a package of programmes and products that we are offering to support work with young people.

Anyone working with young people (you don't have to be a librarian) can subscribe to our innovative new social reading website groupthing.org. groupthing.org is available to libraries, schools, youth centres and anyone else working with young people.

Libraries that are refurbishing their spaces or building new libraries can get young people involved through HeadSpace. HeadSpace offers exciting opportunities for young people to get involved in designing library spaces and services to create an environment where they can read, listen, surf and chill.

This is the question that the National Youth Libraries Board, which The Reading Agency is part of, has been working to answer.

The answer that we came up with is the National Youth Offer, which you can download from Resources. The youth offer describes the sorts of services libraries can, and should, be providing for young people and how young people can get involved in running services in their local libraries.

It is based on extensive research, consultation and all the good examples of young people and libraries working together. The National Libraries Board hope that this youth offer will challenge libraries to look again at the services they offer to young people. And illustrate the vital role libraries have in running activities that young people want to get involved with and learn from.

The offer was launched at a national conference on 29 January 2008 ran jointly with The Reading Agnecy and the Local Government Association.

Following this conference, we have written more about the youth offer, gathered examples of initiatives involving young people and libraries working together, and made suggestions for how libraries can campaign to deliver the youth offer. It's in the second of our New thinking series of publications available through our online Shop.

Resources for libraries

In Resources you will find a number of documents to help you understand and deliver the youth offer. These include the:

• heads of library services PowerPoint presentation to use with your Director of Children's Services and other strategic partners
• guidance notes to use with the presentation
• a briefing paper for heads of library services and ASCEL members, about the youth offer and the National Youth Libraries Board
• an evidence-based research report on young people's views, which inspired the youth offer.

Multiple copies of the youth offer have been distributed to library services and other key partners across the country. Order additional copies through our online Shop.

National Youth Libraries Board

The National Youth Libraries Board is chaired by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council and is managed by The Reading Agency.

Other members are:

• Society of Chief Librarians
• MLA Yorkshire
• Local Government Association
• Department for Children, Schools and Families
• Department for Culture, Media and Sport
• National Youth Agency
• Association of Senior Children's and Education Librarians
• Head of Community Learning and Development at Norfolk Children's Services.