The Reader Organisation

The Reader Organisation has through their pioneering Reading for Health scheme developed an innovative intervention, ‘Shared Reading’, in order to promote wellbeing in a range of contexts, which include community, hospital and acute settings. The shared reading model brings people together in weekly groups to listen to poems and stories read aloud. Thoughts and experiences are shared; personal and social connections are made.
This approach focuses on the person rather than any health issue. By focusing on people not problems it identifies resource. The underlying tenet or central power of the shared reading model means that through works of fiction or poetry reading can help individuals to make changes to how they feel about themselves and how they relate to other people. In this way, literature has a powerful potential to contribute to both general wellbeing as well as healing processes.