Inclusive – Vital North Partnership

From children’s books to children’s health

How can children’s literature collections contribute to supporting children’s health? Is there a role that Seven Stories: The National Centre for Children’s Books can play in health settings? How can sharing stories enhance children and young people’s mental wellbeing? In this blog post, find out about how Newcastle University and Seven Stories are starting to explore these questions through the Vital North Partnership’s work…

“What happens in pregnancy and early childhood impacts on physical and emotional health all the way through to adulthood… the earliest experiences, starting in the womb, shape a baby’s brain development.”

Health matters: giving every child the best start in life, Public Health England 2016

The first 1001 days of a child’s life are critical. A period of rapid growth, babies’ brains are shaped by their early experiences and interactions they have with the grownups who care for them. Healthy development, including language development, from conception to age two “is linked to improved mental and physical health, reductions in risk and antisocial behaviour and achievement at school and beyond.” (The 1001 Critical Days).

Recent research led by Newcastle University’s Professor James Law from the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences, which involved Seven Stories in an advisory capacity, concluded that reading with pre-school children boosts language by eight months. Calling for additional support from public health authorities, Professor Law said, “Reading with small children has a powerful effect. For this reason, it should be promoted through people like public health visitors and other public health professionals as this simple act has the potential to make a real difference.”

And beyond early childhood reading, museums are increasingly considering how their programmes can strategically contribute to public health and wellbeing across the life course.

A parent reads with a young child at Seven Stories. Image: Seven Stories, The National Centre for Children's Books, photography by Richard Kenworthy — A parent reads with a young child at Seven Stories. Image: Seven Stories, The National Centre for Children’s Books, photography by Richard Kenworthy

Seven Stories deliver award-winning learning and family reading programmes, which champion reading for pleasure and support literacy development. Seven Stories also have expertise working with children with additional learning and sensory needs, and delivering activities in hospice and other health settings. Newcastle University’s internationally recognised Faculty of Medical Sciences tackles challenges in health and healthcare, including ageing, cancer, cell biology, genetics, drug development, medicine in society and neuroscience. Through the Vital North Partnership, we aim to realise a range of social, educational and cultural benefits – and exploring public health is becoming an increasing area of focus for our work together.

We’re starting to explore how we can collaborate with public health providers and enhance public understanding of health and wellbeing, and we’re already planning some interesting activity. Here’s what I can share so far about our 2019 plans…

What makes us, us?

On Saturday 2^nd and Sunday 3^rd March 2019, staff and students from Newcastle University’s Institute of Neuroscience and School of Psychology delivered a weekend of activity, ‘What Makes Us, Us?’, at Seven Stories. Led by Dr Ann Fitchett and Dr Billie Moffat-Knox, children and families visiting Seven Stories engaged with Newcastle University students to explore what it means to be human – what we have in common, and what makes us unique. Through different activity stations, families learnt about brain science, why acts of kindness make us happy and how we see colours.

Henry Marsh on ‘brain surgery and other stories’

Thinking about how children’s books can engage with health narratives and medical research, we’re looking forward to this year’s Fickling Lecture on Developments in Children’s Literature with Henry Marsh, neurosurgeon and author. Marsh pioneered techniques in operating on the brain under local anaesthetic and has written two books about his experience as a neurosurgeon.

Henry Marsh will be discussing how doctors, witnesses and participants in the stories of their patients’ lives, are beginning to tell children’s stories about their practice. He will explain what he thinks makes a good medical story for younger readers.

Henry Marsh, who will be this year's Fickling Lecture speaker. Image: Paulo Castanheira Lua de Papel — Henry Marsh, who will be this year’s Fickling Lecture speaker. Image: Paulo Castanheira Lua de Papel

This is part of Newcastle University’s free Insights public lecture series, hosted by the Children’s Literature Unit and Seven Stories, and sponsored by David Fickling Books. The lecture will take place on Tuesday 30^th April 2019 and seats are allocated on a first-come, first served basis. I hope you can attend what I’m sure will be a fascinating reflection on children’s books and children’s health. For more information, visit: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/events/noticeboard/item/brainsurgeryandotherstories.html

Enhancing young people’s resilience with Readers in Residence

I’m also very pleased to say that the Vital North Partnership has secured funding from Newcastle University’s Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty Impact Fund to support a new project. This will bring Seven Stories’ Creative Learning and Engagement team and the Children’s Literature Unit together to explore how children’s literature can be used to support young people’s wellbeing.

As part of the project, led by Dr Hazel Sheeky-Bird and Dr Lucy Pearson, Seven Stories will be working with the research team to deliver a version of their Reader in Residence programme in a secondary school setting for the first time, exploring Seven Stories’ Aidan and Nancy Chambers collection and thinking creatively about emotional resilience.

I am excited about the potential impact of this new focus for our work together – and I believe that through the Vital North Partnership, Seven Stories and Newcastle University can enhance and promote public health, and particularly children’s health, in the North East and beyond.

Elmer’s Colourful Concert at Seven Stories

In this blog post, Newcastle University students Christie, Sarah, Kate and Loren tell us about their forthcoming event at Seven Stories: The National Centre for Children’s Books, which is all about Elmer, happiness and self-acceptance…

When asked by our lecturer what we wanted to do for our Music Enterprise event as part of the MUS3095 third-year module, we knew we wanted to do something educational, fun and for a good cause. We all had some prior experience of working with children in music education events through outreach projects, work experience or student placements. This became the focus for our events management project.

We began the process by visiting Percy Hedley School, a charity-funded school for children with additional needs based in Jesmond. After meeting with the headteacher and the music teacher at the school, we began to realise the unique approach they took to music education. More than anything else this visit inspired us and we realised that music really can be so much more than the notes on a page.

After this inspirational visit, we decided that we definitely wanted to do an event for children that would be interactive and participatory throughout. We wanted to have the event open for families to be able to come along, have fun and engage in music. Our next mission was to find a venue to host our event.

A family explores the Elmer and Friends exhibition. Image: Seven Stories, The National Centre for Children's Books — A family explores the Elmer and Friends exhibition. Image: Seven Stories, The National Centre for Children’s Books

At the beginning of the semester, Rachel had come to Newcastle University and talked to us about the possibility of hosting an event at Seven Stories. We met with Rachel and Rose Mockford, the Events Co-ordinator at Seven Stories, at the end of November to see if they would be interested in working with us and luckily for us, they were!

We had the basic structure for our event but we still needed a theme to tie our ideas together. We were aware that there had been other musical events based upon books held at Seven Stories that were successful and so we began to discuss books that had been influential in our childhoods. ‘Elmer’ by David McKee was suggested and we quickly realised that this story was ideal for our event. Not only could we envisage how this wonderful story could be musically adapted, we also felt that the themes of finding happiness and accepting our individuality resonated with our experience of visiting Percy Hedley School.

Elmer makes an appearance... Image: Seven Stories, The National Centre for Children's Books — Elmer makes an appearance… Image: Seven Stories, The National Centre for Children’s Books

Seven Stories informed us that this would be fitting as they are celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the story with their Elmer and Friends exhibition. We spoke to our fellow students and found a group of keen, enthusiastic musicians excited about the opportunity to perform together. The Elmer’s Colourful Concert band consists of Rebecca Roberts (singer), Joe Issa (pianist), Glen Bruinewoud (trumpeter) and Alex Utting (trombonist) but be assured they won’t be the only people making noise on the day!

As we’re putting the final touches on our event, we would like to welcome you to join us for Elmer’s Colourful Concert on Sunday 17th March, 2:00-2:45pm at Seven Stories, Ouseburn Valley, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, Tyne and Wear, NE1 2PQ. It’s a 45 minute event aimed at children aged 7 and under and their families. Tickets are £5 per person (including children and adults) and you can book online via the Seven Stories website!

Elmer's Colourful Concert is on Sunday 17th March 2019! — Elmer’s Colourful Concert is on Sunday 17th March 2019!

Thanks Christie, Sarah, Kate and Loren! I’m really looking forward to your Colourful Concert – where there’ll be a very special visit from a certain rainbow elephant…

Filming Seven Stories’ Life-Changing Stories campaign

Seven Stories: The National Centre for Children’s Books are currently raising £7,000 to put children with additional needs at the heart of their story. In this post, hear how film production intern and Newcastle University PhD candidate Evripidis Karydis has supported Seven Stories’ very first crowdfunding campaign…

Seven Stories believe that stories help children to understand the world around them, and that every child regardless of age, gender, background and ability should have the opportunity to enjoy this experience.

With this in mind and with the promise of 50% match funding from the Community Foundation Tyne and Wear, they decided to try crowdfunding for the first time to secure additional funding from their supporters and the public. Seven Stories will be using the money raised to fund a range of accessible events and experiences designed specifically for children with sensory and additional needs.

Launching the Life-changing Stories campaign, Kate Edwards, Seven Stories’ Chief Executive, said: “Our ambition is for Seven Stories to be a hub for parents and carers of children with disabilities to socialise, play and learn more about how to enrich their children’s lives through the wonderful world of children’s books.”

This campaign video was filmed and edited by PhD student Evripidis Karydis (or Evris, for short!), who produced two 4 minute trailer videos to support the communications. Evris is undertaking an NCL Internship through Newcastle University’s Careers Service. NCL Internships are open to all current Newcastle University students, and offer a placement of up to 100 hours during University terms and a student bursary of £750, made up of contributions from the business and the University.

Marketing and Communications Manager Victoria Sanderson, said of Evris’ work on the crowdfunding campaign: “Evris’ performance throughout the project was exceptional; he offered expert guidance when it was required, identified any risks prior to filming which increased efficiency, met deadlines, used his initiative when editing the videos and was accommodating with amends, even when they arrived after signing-off. Overall, Evris was professional and a delight to work with.”

This built on Evris’ previous internship with Seven Stories in the 2016/17 academic year, where he filmed Seven Stories’ Living Books project in early years settings, working with the Creative Learning and Engagement Team.

For Evris, “having already completed a NCL internship with Seven Stories during the 2016/17 academic year it was not difficult for me to decide to work with the foundation once again. The people at Seven Stories are true professionals and really helped me to produce high quality videos for their causes. Furthermore, the reason behind the crowdfunding campaign was another motivation for me to say yes and work once more with Seven Stories and I am pleased that my videos contributed in order to achieve the goal of raising £7000.”

“Being an aspiring filmmaker myself working through my internship I have managed again to practice my filmmaking craft and helped me develop my communication skills.”

“The highlight for me during my placement was when I got the chance to film a family for the crowdfunding campaign video as it gave me a good insight of the people who were going to be benefited by the campaign.”

“I truly believe that the work being done at Seven Stories is really important as it is making a massive difference in children’s lives and their families and I would really like to work with them again in the future.”

Take a look at Evris’ second video from the Life-changing Stories campaign:

And the results? Well, Seven Stories hit over 75% of their funding target in the first day of the crowdfunding campaign, which is amazing news! Thank you to Evris for helping to make this campaign such a success. But they still need a few more donations to hit their £7000 target before 2^nd April 2018 – can you help Seven Stories to ensure that every child is part of their story?

Find out more about the campaign and donate now at: http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/life-changing-stories

A Place at the Table 2018

On 6th February 2018, thanks to a bursary from CILIP North East, I attended Inclusive Minds’ third annual A Place at the Table event at Penguin Random House in London. A Place at the Table aims to provide a space for the children’s book industry to share best practice around inclusion and diversity and commit to taking practical actions to effect change. In this blog post, I’ll be reflecting on the day and outlining some of the actions that Seven Stories: The National Centre for Children’s Books and Newcastle University are taking through the Vital North Partnership…

Author Juno Dawson, in her opening keynote, celebrated how far the publishing industry has come since the first A Place at the Table event in 2016. She mentioned lots of amazing books and authors – from Patrice Lawrence’s prize-winning debut Orangeboy, to Angie Thomas’s bestselling The Hate U Give – and new initiatives like CILIP’s current diversity review of the Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Awards. I noted lots of books I want to read – including Juno’s!

Author Juno Dawson opened the A Place at the Table event. Image: Inclusive Minds

Then there were the roundtable and forum discussions, where we discussed barriers to authentic inclusion, and identified ways to shift these. For Seven Stories, the artform of children’s literature is at the heart of everything they do – and it’s by going to events like this that they can flag up with publishers that inclusion is fundamental to the national story they aim to tell. Seven Stories’ workforce (like that of many arts organisations) is not particularly diverse – they’re aiming to shift that barrier through targeted pathways to work programmes from 2018 to 2022.

Highlights of the day for me were hearing from Year 10 pupil Jarvia, one of Inclusive Minds’ Ambassadors, about her reading experiences – she spoke about reading new writing on Wattpad as she feels it’s less filtered – and I loved hearing Jay Hulme’s “angry trans” performance poetry (his description!):

In the afternoon discussions, I ended up sat next to the author, actress and presenter Cerrie Burnell. In her presentation, she talked about how the books she read as a child didn’t reflect her experience. She recounted a story about playing at Peter Pan in the playground: there was already a Wendy and a Tinkerbell, so one of the other children suggested that she could be Captain Hook – Cerrie was adamant that she was more of a Tigerlily. Cerrie encouraged her fellow authors to represent difference in an incidental way: “write the thing that you know, or write the thing that you want to see.”

Robin Stevens, author of the Murder Most Unladylike mysteries, talked about the two types of offence her writing might potentially cause (the one she loses sleep over is making errors about misrepresenting cultures and experiences outside of her own, which is why in her recent books she has been working with sensitivity readers) and Di Airey of Diversity Dynamics reminded us that although publishing is in some ways ahead of other sectors, that we still have a way to go: “There’s not enough change: there are too many people who hide an aspect of their difference.”

Discussion inclusion, equality and diversity at A Place At The Table. Image: Inclusive Minds — Discussion inclusion, equality and diversity at A Place at the Table. Image: Inclusive Minds

I also heard about so many other initiatives and voices over the course of the day through the insights and case studies: from new publishers like Knights Of; titles including Penny Joelson’s I Have No Secrets and Otter-Barry Books and Pop-Up Projects’ Rising Stars anthology; initiatives like Penguin Random House’s WriteNow programme; prizes like the Amnesty CILIP Honour; accessible events as part of the Southbank Centre’s Imagine Festival. I’m taking lots of ideas and contacts away from the event to follow up on.

It was an inspiring and thought-provoking day, but ensuring the Vital North Partnership’s activities are inclusive is an ongoing process. We’ve done some interesting work, such as our Diverse Voices? symposium in November, and our recent Geographies of Gender and Generation collaboration, and in 2018, we’ll be focussing on BAME voices in children’s literature and activist networks through a new AHRC Creative Economy postdoctoral fellowship led by Dr Aishwarya Subramanian. But there’s still more to do. As Juno said so eloquently in her opening keynote: “The worst thing we can do is think we’ve done it, we’ve achieved diversity. We haven’t done diversity. You can’t tick diversity off the list.”

For more information about A Place at the Table 2018, visit: http://www.inclusiveminds.com/a-place-at-the-table-2018.php

Geography, gender and generation at Seven Stories

This academic year, a new teaching and learning collaboration between Newcastle University’s School of Geography, Politics and Sociology and Seven Stories: The National Centre for Children’s Books brought university students and local primary school children together to explore ideas around gender through an intergenerational practice workshop. In this blog post, I explain how the project came about, what happened, and what we’re doing next…

Seven Stories believes that the books children read help them to better understand themselves and the world around them, and they are passionate about championing inclusive children’s literature.

Dr Michael Richardson, leader of the Geography BA’s third year module Geographies of Gender and Generation, approached Seven Stories last summer about a new teaching collaboration focussing on challenging gender stereotypes. As part of this module, students are asked to develop a campaign or activity which promotes gender equality, and then reflect on this through a written assignment. In the 2017 / 18 academic year, Dr Richardson wanted to provide a focus for his students that would allow them to “explore intergenerational practice as an intervention method for the promotion of gender equality”. Having previously worked with Seven Stories on their 2015 Big Ideas project, Dr Richardson saw Seven Stories as a potential collaborator.

Students exploring children's books in the Seven Stories workshops. Image: Newcastle University — Students exploring children’s books in the Seven Stories workshops. Image: Newcastle University

After receiving support through the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology’s Learning, Teaching and Student Experience fund to kickstart the project, we developed resources and a programme of student workshops, leading to a final event with children and young people at Seven Stories.

In the first workshop, Jayne Humphreys (Learning and Participation Co-ordinator at Seven Stories) and I introduced the students to issues around gender representation in children’s literature. We also introduced the five books that the students would be focussing on in the final schools event:

Dogs Don’t Do Ballet, by Anna Kemp and Sara Ogilvie (Simon and Schuster, 2010)
Tough Guys (Have Feelings Too), by Keith Negley (Flying Eye Books, 2015)
Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World, by Kate Pankhurst (Bloomsbury, 2016)
Izzy Gizmo, by Pip Jones and Sara Ogilvie (Simon and Schuster, 2017)
Introducing Teddy, by Jessica Walton (Bloomsbury, 2016)

Next, the students were asked to pitch which book theywould like to work with. The students said:

“[Izzy Gizmo] promotes the idea of science and technology as a viable career choice for young girls rather than the typical caring roles that are often shown in children’s books. I also like… that the main character is of an ethnic minority”

“I think [Tough Guys (Have Feelings Too)] is… about allowing people of all genders to be more well-rounded human beings. Encouraging emotional literacy in boys in particular is a really simple and effective way to tackle a number of serious issues… This benefits everyone, including women”

Chi Onwurah MP spoke to the students about gender in the workplace. Image: Newcastle University

Having chosen their books, the second student workshop focussed on storytelling and engagement techniques. Jayne led the students through Seven Stories’ approach to story times and how to use stories as a starting point for other conversations and activities. MP for Newcastle Central Chi Onwurah also attended this session, speaking to the students about the gendered workplace.

In November 2017, the students welcomed a class of Year 5 children from nearby Hotspur Primary School to Seven Stories. Working in groups, the students presented a 30-minute session with a small group of children, where they read their story together, discussed the questions about gender that the books raised, and took part in activities such as games, dressing up and drawing.

Students reading stories to the children from Hotspur Primary School. Image: Newcastle University

The students said:

“I thought it was a really creative way to put something we’ve learnt in lectures into a real-life situation.”

“I think the event at Seven Stories was really beneficial for us, as well as the children. Storytelling is definitely a good way of getting some big ideas out to them… I’m going to use this event as experience towards my future teaching career too.”

Teaching staff at Hotspur Primary School said, “We all had such a wonderful time at Seven Stories – what a great workshop!”

For Dr Michael Richardson, “This collaboration with Seven Stories has enabled me to enhance my teaching practice and improve the student experience. My module promotes intergenerational practice, or in other words, methods of bringing groups of people of different ages together. Of particular note was the impact of the local primary school children on my final year undergraduate students. This highlighted just how much children have to teach us as older people and reinforced just how much intergenerational work is a two-way learning process.”

The students leading their session with children from Hotspur Primary School at Seven Stories. Image: Newcastle University

And Jayne Humphreys said: “For Seven Stories, this has been a wonderful opportunity to engage the children of Hotspur Primary and to work collaboratively with the University students. Using children’s literature to challenge, inspire and empower children and young people is at the heart of the work we do at Seven Stories and it was a pleasure to be part of a project which brought intergenerational groups together and engage children in our local community to think about these big issues.”

What’s next? The students have submitted their assignments reflecting on the workshop, and these are being assessed; I’ll also be interested to hear their reflections on this in their module evaluation questionnaires. Following that, we’ll be evaluating the project and thinking about plans for next year. So, watch this space!

Thanks to the GEO3135 students, Dr Michael Richardson, Jayne Humphreys and Hotspur Primary School for their contributions to this blog post.