Take 10

for Read Manchester
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Read Manchester is a Manchester City Council and National Literacy Trust campaign to promote reading and boost literacy throughout the city. Their Six Minutes Reads initiative is based on research that shows reading for pleasure for only six minutes a day reduces tension and promotes health, well-being and learning.

Lydia Allison and James Varney worked in Manchester Communications Academy Harphurhey, St Pauls High School Wythanshawe and Trinity High School in Hulme. Their workshops explored the place only writers and readers can go, where we reimagine these little black squiggles into worlds and people and senses and stories. The pupils presented their responses at a Literature Festival event in Manchester Central Library on October 10th.

In a relationship brokered by Manchester Literature Festival, three Squad writers were commissioned to write creative pieces inspired by their personal experiences and the places ten minutes of reading can take them. The commissioned writers, who all read their pieces at the event, were Annie Dobson, Elizabeth Gibson and Jack Mann. You can read the full pieces here.