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Rep’s Report on UmbrelLA6 2001
This years UmbrelLA conference (July 2001) was a new experience
for me in more ways than one, my first time attending and my first
time as organiser.
Luckily for me the first speaker was Jonathan Douglas talking
about Reader Development as an aid to Social Inclusion. His session
covered both the broad spectrum of Reader Development as well
as specific projects such as Sure Start and the Peoples Network.
A crucial point he made was that inclusion is more than access.
It should not have come as a surprise that his session had the
largest turn out as he was both informative and very entertaining,
a good start to anyone’s day!
 Carol
Taylor, head of Derbyshire’s Read On Write Away (ROWA) initiative,
added a practical side to this general theme of social inclusion.
She discussed the role of ROWA in setting up pilot projects, then
field testing and evaluating them before developing them further.
Projects that were discussed covered a vast diversity of communities.
The emphasis was always on community partnership, which was the
main thrust of the talk. Carol was able to show by examples how
a bit of risk and initiative really can make a big difference
in areas of need. One of those who attended her talk said it was
"the most passionate and inspiring session I’ve been
to".
With more than a little to think about, dinner was a good time
to relax and enjoy the lunchtime speaker, Penelope Lively OBE.
Wonderfully witty, she put across her childhood experiences in
both Cairo and England with great insight and humour. It was hardly
a surprise that so many delegates were in no great hurry to leave.
To round things off we had a fascinating session by Aidan Chambers,
who managed to draw people in, despite being at the very close
of conference. His talk began with a look at the teenager in fiction
from Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye to present day.
Aidan covered the attitudes as expressed through such characters
and how he perceived the way things had changed. His analysis
of his own series of teenage novels was shown to chart the historical
role of female characters in fiction, from invisibility to prominence.
One of his main points was regarding the books on our library
shelves that do not issue so well. He felt that every time we
remove one of these we narrow the field of borrowing. Libraries
are about one reader and that book is the most important book
to that person.
To my great relief it all went well and by the end of it I could
happily say I had had an enjoyable, if exhausting time. I certainly
couldn’t have asked for a better set of speakers who each
managed to captivate their audiences and make me so very relieved!
Cathy Petersen YLG UmbrelLA6 Rep
More YLG News
Meet the Commitee On being
an Eastern Branch Rep!
Bookstart and Beyond
YLG SW training day
Libraries and Learning
London and SE training day
Yorkshire and Humber YLG
Chair's Report
Read On – Write Away!
Carol Taylor
Banquet of Reading
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