I am a reader

Welcome to the online home of I Am A Reader, a project that set out to ask the big question: is reading creative? The pages of this website aim to give libraries, individuals, and the wider literature sector an insight into this groundbreaking project, which:

• brought together groups of readers, including those whose voices might not be heard, to explore their role as co-creators of fictional worlds, alongside professional writers, and culminating in a co-commissioned anthology of new fiction Six Stories from I Am A Reader

• commissioned the creation of 22 beautiful illustrations inspired by the comments of real adult readers, and which became the centrepiece of a library touring exhibition and a virtual exhibition

• posed the question: do you think you’re being creative when you read? in libraries and via a digital campaign, resulting in more than 500 responses, some of which can be read on this website in The Little Book of Reader Insights

By sharing these outcomes and insights with colleagues across the libraries and wider literature sector, we hope to ignite a conversation about reading as a creative act and nurture a new understanding of adult readers today; how they talk about reading, what it means to them, and what happens when they open the pages of a book. In doing so, we hope to inspire new ways of talking to, and engaging with, readers.