Wisbech Reads
Wisbech Reads will create opportunities for improving the skills and life prospects for all of those living in the Wisbech area through reading, writing and speaking.
The Vision
Wisbech Reads is a partnership located in the Wisbech area of Cambridgeshire whose focus is to improve literacy skills amongst both children and adults. The partnership is taking a community- based approach to this task believing that engaging the whole community and using trusted community assets to facilitate delivery will bring about sustainable, community-driven development that will yield results for the longer term.
The Partnership
Wisbech Reads has a Steering Group made up of representatives from different sectors, including public, private, community, education and third sector organisations
20Twenty Productions CIC : Katherine Nightingale
Cambridgeshire County Council - Community and Partnership Development : Carl Suckling & Kerrie Tonks
Cambridgeshire County Council - Early Years: Community Base Family Literacy : Helen Wootton
Cambridgeshire Library Service : Louise Aldridge
Clarion Housing : Maria Walker
Community Volunteer : Mike Forrest
Community Volunteer : Jenny Atkins
Diocese of Ely / Orchards C of E Academy : Clare Claxton
Festival Bridge : Stephanie Peachey
Friends of Wisbech Library : Robin Hine
Rotary Club of Wisbech: : Maggie Barwell
Thomas Clarkson Academy : Victor Bronwisewski
Wisbech and Fenland Museum : Sarah Coleman
Wisbech Community Development Trust : Chris Stevens
Wisbech Schools’ Partnership - Peckover School : Carrie Norman
Wisbech Town Council : Terry Jordan
National Trust/Peckover House : Ben Ricketts
Background to Wisbech Reads
In 2014, Wisbech Reads secured Arts Council England funding to ‘Enhance children’s confidence and enjoyment in reading and writing, speaking and listening’. A small core group of partners had success in achieving this by facilitating regular encounters with books and their authors, stories and storytellers, and by providing participatory, intergenerational opportunities for families to engage more creatively with reading and writing.
Since the end of the initial programme in 2016, the work of the Partnership has continued through partners’ in-kind contributions and the securing of small grants to undertake events on an ad hoc basis. This has included a schools’ engagement programme; a public festival; one-off events; and the building of relationships with local authors and artists.
In 2018 the partnership was stengthened by funding from Clarion Housing and The Festaival Bridge and engaged Cambridgeshire ACRE who supported Wisbech Reads to:
- Strengthen the Wisbech Reads Partnership and its governance;
- Obtain an agreed vision and focused objectives for the delivery of outputs and outcomes, that will create a significant impact;
- Evaluate local needs and engage the most disadvantaged children and their families in Wisbech Reads delivery
The partnership continues to run a summer reading festival and has extended it's reach to schools by running a poetry festival in March 2020.
Since
2014
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