“We miss the incredible connections we achieve as we gather round a piece of great writing - hearing it read and savouring it, and then thinking about it, and listening to the range of reactions and opinions. It's a meaningful way to spend time with others, like an antidote to a day with too much 'small talk.’”
Marnie Kennedy, Reader in Residence

Since The Duncairn opened in 2014, their Reader in Residence, Marnie Kennedy, has been a relentlessly dynamic force behind their volunteer-based Reading Aloud project - an energizing, and communally soothing Shared Reading project, in which: “The facilitator reads aloud but everybody else has a copy, so it is a very engaging way of paying attention to a text. You are reading at the pace of the speaking voice. That is not how we normally read, particularly in modern times where we tend to skim read, so this is slowing everybody down. We are all reading in the same moment, there is a rule in fact that you do not read ahead. That means that we are discovering the story, and feeling the emotions, and being moved by the imagery all in the same moment.”

It all started back in 2014 when Marnie heard that The 174 Trust had refurbished Antrim Road's Presbyterian Church to create a space for community arts. With years of experience working on reading projects with Grow Community Garden she was very aware of the benefits. “ The ethos of community gardening and shared reading is very similar,” she recalled. “It's about well-being and bringing people together, trying something new, improving your confidence, and a stepping stone to other things.” Inspired through this experience she knew exactly what she needed to do. “I was looking for a way of introducing literature to the local community,” she told me, “bringing it alive in this new Centre.”

The timing was perfect. She and Rev Bill Shaw [Director of the 174 Trust, the parent charity of The Duncairn] were introduced to a Liverpool-based organisation called The Reader, the charity that developed Shared Reading, and which was coincidentally working towards instigating the idea of Shared Reading in the North of Ireland. It was a perfect fit, and The Reader has been offering invaluable support for Reading Aloud at The Duncairn since the project started, including training and mentoring for Marnie and her dedicated team of volunteers.

In Reading Aloud there is no homework, indeed participants have no idea in advance what they will be reading when they arrive. “You could be reading Dostoevsky and Seamus Heaney one week or you could be reading Doris Lessing and Carol Ann Duffy the next, Marnie explained.” However, you would be mistaken if you thought that a Shared Reading session didn’t need any preparation by the volunteer readers who run them. “Shared Reading is an intimate activity,” Marnie explained. “You want to create a feeling of equality and equal participation. Everybody's opinion matters and is valid. It is not educational at all, the focus is only on reading for pleasure although there are lots of other benefits obviously. You don’t have to be literate. It has literacy benefits, but that isn’t how we pitch it, it is really just about being social.”

“We would pause during the story, that's part of the [volunteer] reader's preparation,” Marnie continued. “They spend time with the material, thinking about it, reading aloud to themselves. It’s actually a key part of your preparation. This is why the training takes three days and why you need mentoring afterwards, because this is a skill, and you do develop a lot of skills. It is very complex, when you’re reading aloud you’re paying attention, as you’re reading to everybody else in the room. You develop a real sense of the response, so reading slowly helps that. You would prepare where you are going to pause and you would open a conversation, looking for people's responses, lead a discussion, while being open to where that would go... being a reader is a very interesting role, you certainly get as much out of it as you put in, but you have to remove yourself as well. We’re trained to facilitate, and part of the training is to very much focus on opening a conversation while not putting very much of yourself in. We don't talk about the writer, and there is no analysis. It's not very literary in the way that people think of that word and most people have an amazing experience... It feels very safe and very quickly people feel comfortable about expressing themselves and personal things... we know how much bravery it takes to come through a door, especially if you were on your own... So, it is a wonderful vehicle for building relationships, which so fits with the ethos of The Duncairn, doing that through wonderful literature through the Arts... ”

Over the years the project has blossomed. “We have two weekly groups now because the Monday afternoon was bursting and is now bursting again,” Marnie explained of the state of play before Covid restrictions kicked in. “We [started] a Tuesday night group and some people come to both because they love it so much.” Outside The Duncairn, they have developed relationships with certain care homes in which they read, and in February 2019 Belfast Central Library began hosting a Shared Reading session every Friday afternoon led by two volunteers, for which they recently launched a weekly Zoom reading session, which is: “going brilliantly.”

“We've had to completely pause our face-to-face reading groups,” she continued, pointing out the changes that the pandemic has made to the project. “Lots of us are staying in touch via WhatsApp, sharing a mix of poetry, silly videos and support. The Reader - the charity that developed Shared Reading - has also provided ways of connecting with literature online via Zoom and Facebook Livestreams. I coordinate this project as a volunteer, and right now my paid work continues from home while I also educate my children. So for the first time in six years Shared Reading can't be a top priority, and that has been strange, and sometimes disheartening.”

However, Marnie Kennedy intends to settle back into reading at The Duncairn as soon as circumstances allow. “Many of our groups in the community are in care home settings, so we'll return when it's safe to do so... We'll get back to reading in The Duncairn as soon as it's safe, maybe in smaller groups and in one of the larger spaces. I'd hope we can run both our weekly sessions, on a Monday afternoon and a Tuesday night, soon. Before lockdown we had been about to welcome a new cohort of volunteers, with training provided from our friends at The Reader in Liverpool.”

Like so much of what we took for granted before Covid 19 arrived, The Duncairn's Reading Aloud project has been put on ice. However, the break has given the group some time to reflect. Looking back ,how does Marnie feel about the achievements of Reading Aloud? “Proud of making an important contribution to the unique atmosphere of The Duncairn,” she told me simply. “But mostly, confident that our approach to reading - for readers and non-readers alike - is making important human connections.”