The Vision Project

“While there is no silver bullet, the message is clear:
if we focus tightly on the areas where the literacy
challenge is sharpest, we can make a meaningful
difference to children’s lives.”
Working with Experian, we’ve been able to pinpoint
the nation’s literacy cold spots – communities
where as many as a third of the adult population
is functionally illiterate, child poverty is rife, social
mobility has stagnated and life expectancy hasn’t
improved.
Using this analysis, we have established 12
Literacy Hubs and campaigns in towns, cities and
regions where low levels of literacy and poverty
are seriously impacting people’s lives, including
Middlesbrough, Bradford, Stoke-on-Trent and the
North East.
In our Literacy Hubs, we bring together multiple
local stakeholders, including businesses, education,
community, health and cultural organisations,
to galvanise the whole community, its skills and
assets in decade-long campaigns to improve
local literacy levels and drive social mobility and
inclusion.
Our approach is different in each place we work
because every community has different needs and
this is the best way to create long-lasting change.
And we are starting to see evidence that placebased
approaches can move the dial on literacy in
the nation’s most disadvantaged communities.
When we began working with local partners
in Middlesbrough, children from the town
were starting school with some of the lowest
communication, language and literacy skills in the
country. Five years on and the attainment gap
with the national average has halved.
During this time, we have delivered a range of
interventions through our local partnerships, each
with the aim of improving the early language skills
of disadvantaged children in Middlesbrough.
For example, we delivered targeted literacy
interventions in nurseries, ran a town-wide
advertising campaign with the local council to
encourage parents to chat, play and read with
their child every day, and worked with health
visitors to provide new parents with information
and advice on the importance of reading with their
baby from day one.
Place-based working enables us to tackle
intergenerational low literacy in areas of
concentrated deprivation and give some of the
most disadvantaged children and young people
in our society the literacy skills they need to take
control of their futures.
While there is no silver bullet, the message is clear:
if we focus tightly on the areas where the literacy
challenge is sharpest, we can make a meaningful
difference to children’s and families’ lives and help
them to become informed, empowered and active
members of their communities and society.
DEVELOPING HEALTH & INDEPENDENCE
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