Discovering the joy of Six

Over 80 members of staff at De Montfort University signed up to take part in the Six Book challenge when UNISON branch lifelong learning team launched the initiative at the beginning of 2011.

The Challenge is an initiative from the Reading Agency, which encourages people to read six books of any kind and record their reactions in a reading diary in order to gain incentives, the chance to win a national prize draw and a certificate when they finish.

While the lifelong learning team opened the Challenge to all staff, Vice-Chancellor Dominic Shellard was one of the first to join up, calling it “a superb initiative”, the team prioritised supporting and encouraging emergent and less confident readers.

The branch opened and stocked book-swap libraries in the various faculty buildings onsite, in addition to the Quick Reads library it had already established for post and porterage and cleaning staff with the help of 100 new books supplied by the university’s HR Training and Development Unit. It also ran occasional lunchtime book-swaps on campus to help people choose titles to read.

“Reading is enjoyable, we need to help people get into the habit of reading, and hopefully we can cultivate a passion here at DMU for picking up and enjoying a book,” commented union learning rep Andrew Jennison.

The lifelong learning team also organised lunchtime readings with Leicester writers, including Asian teenage fiction author Bali Rai and fantasy writer Tabbie Browne, to help keep reading in the forefront of people’s minds during the challenge.