Cultural Value: Assessing the intrinsic value of The Reader Organisation’s Shared Reading Scheme

Identifying the intrinsic value components of The Reader's Shared Reading model as a specific participatory and voluntary experience, in creation of both individual meaningfulness and a strongly interactive small community. Also examined the relationship of this intrinsic value to collateral and secondary (theraputic, health, economic, social) benefits.

The report found that the cultural value of Shared Reading is established on the basis of a number of factors, including the multi-layered and humanising presence of literature in relation to personal contemplation triggered in areas of experience and meaning otherwise difficult to locate, and the formation of small-group communities in which the relation between private and public was closer than conventionally allowed.

Longden, E., Davis, P., Billington, J., Lampropoulou, S., Farrington, G., Magee, F., Walsh E., Corcoran, R. (2015)