London Reading and Health Event

The Reading Cure: A Conversation
Literature: Medicine Chest of the Soul

On Wednesday 14th January, The Reader Organisation and The Lancet hosted an event at the Wellcome Collection, London to open up a discussion about the relationship between reading and health. You can read about the event, see the photographs and download an audio recording on our website.

We have had some post-event thoughts and feel that we need to discuss the importance of reading aloud further.

"A difficulty is a light", Valéry.

We can't stress enough how important the reading aloud aspect of Get Into Reading is!

When a book, or poem, is read aloud, it comes to life as a physical presence in the group. This coming to life allows people to engage with the text more readily: it is opened up and shared. Even if the text is difficult or not everyone in the group decides to read aloud, everyone is together on the same page, at the same time and assisting one another to get through it. This makes the experience not only a social one but it also turns a scary challenge into an enjoyable, shared one.

We would like to discuss this further - we are in the process of setting up a wiki for this purpose, we'll notify you when this is up and running - and hope that within the next few months we will be able to host a further seminar specifically on the subject of reading aloud and its importance for health and wellbeing.

Please let us know if this would be of interest to you. If there are any further issues around reading and health that you would like to see investigated in greater depth, we would welcome your suggestions for other seminars in the future.

Interested in becoming a Get Into Reading facilitator? Visit our Read to Lead Training pages to find out how.