As human beings we live our lives telling stories. Our stories carry the values communities share. A good story shares knowledge and experience, entertains and inspires us — and connects us to each other. Our collaborative partnership joins literacy, literature organisations and creative arts organisations under one umbrella, to launch our 2025 campaign. This year our message focuses on the amazing impact that joyful, imaginative storytelling and reading can create for individuals and our national and global communities.

Current research affirms a positive ‘reading-for-pleasure’ culture would:
• engender our sense of well being
• strengthen our empathy and compassion towards each other
• foster confidence and creative, problem-solving skills
• nurture children’s imagination
• further develop social cohesion in our communities.

Michael Rosen reminds us that reading for pleasure creates a space for readers to interpret; to empathise; to leap from the oral code of English to the written code; to learn knowledge and gain wisdom; to learn about stylistic devices and to learn about possibility and change. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989)—an international agreement on childhood, contains a clear affirmation of every child and young person’s right to read for enjoyment. Article 17 clarifies students’ right to read children’s books for their personal and social prosperity. 

“It is not enough to simply teach children to read; we have to give them something worth reading. Something that will stretch their imaginations, something that will help them make sense of their own lives and encourage them to reach out toward people whose lives are quite different from their own." Katherine Paterson

At a time when the world is increasingly uncertain and volatile, our young people deserve the opportunity to enjoy sharing stories in their schools and homes and to imagine alternative possibilities for their futures and our world more broadly.

You can find more research and our stories @ https://foundationforlearningandliteracy.info/symp-home/