Children’s Books Ireland takes lockdown lessons in its stride to reach readers nationwide

Ireland's schools and libraries may have been closed during lockdown, but the nine-strong team at Children's Books Ireland (CBI) has been "busier than ever”, according to c.e.o. Elaina Ryan (pictured).

In many ways, the lockdown could not have struck at a worse time for the organisation: 2020 marked the first year with professional services network KPMG on board as the headline sponsor of the CBI Book of the Year Awards. It is also CBI’s first year as a recipient of Ecclesiastical Insurance’s Movement for Good Award, which will see the financial services company put £50,000 over three years into CBI’s work to engage nine to 12-year olds in reading. This year was also due to be the 30th Book of the Year Awards, with a “really exciting” winners’ ceremony due to take place at Smock Alley Theatre as part of the International Literature Festival Dublin. Instead, this year’s shortlist was announced in person just before the lockdown, and all subsequent awards plans had to move online.

This includes the schools programme for the awards, which “all had to be re-imagined really quickly”. CBI went about doing this by consulting with the schools involved with its Junior Juries shadowing scheme, which identified a need for video content that children and young people can access at any time. As a result, CBI ran a training session for the authors and illustrators shortlisted for its Book of the Year Awards to teach them how to self-record such content. It also adapted the winners’ announcement event into a video ceremony, featuring Irish broadcaster Rick O’Shea, and children and young people from all over the country sharing their thoughts on the winning books. It was broadcast live on YouTube, with around 300 people watching along as it happened (the video has since racked up more than 2,500 views).

Ryan says that one of the positives of the ceremony going digital is that it enabled for greater reach: “Getting kids there physically is expensive and it’s not practical, so having the ceremony broadcast out really helped us to properly cater for all of Ireland.” It has also inspired CBI to try to find ways to keep a digital element to its in person events going forward.

During this period, it has "massively accelerated" the resource area on its website; among other things, it has adapted its Champions of Reading programme, which sees authors and illustrators make several visits to an assigned school, to an online version, with artists providing recorded sessions instead. CBI has also shared new themed reading lists across a range of genres and topics to provide guidance for families.

Pictured: The CBI team reading the awards-shortlisted books on zoom

Despite the positive aspects of digital engagement, CBI was aware that a lot of people were at home with varying levels of internet access and resources. To redress this, it teamed up with the Ireland’s national postal service An Post to produce Imagine Nation, an activity book featuring creative writing and illustration activities for children of all ages, with contributors including Oliver Jeffers and Niamh Sharkey. The book was posted out to 85,000 houses around the country, shared online as a free download, and given away over the Easter weekend with the Irish Times to another 115,000 homes. A small print run was also sent directly to emergency accommodation for families experiencing homelessness, provision centres for refugees and children’s hospitals, and CBI has just got funding to send a second print run, along with art supplies, to these places. Additional content has been added since: there are new pages in the Irish language, and low-text pages for children whose first language is not English. Ryan says the playbook has been “extraordinarily well-received” and the team is “really proud” to have distributed it so quickly and widely.

Changing hands
Lockdown also saw the handing over of the baton from the former Laureate na nÓg (Ireland’s children’s laureate) Sarah Crossan to new postholder Áine Ní Ghlinn (see Interview, pp18–19). CBI had to make changes here too, with Crossan’s last event in the role moved to Instagram Live, and the incoming laureate doing a huge amount of PR across radio, TV and print instead of the usual inauguration event with the president of Ireland. “You just have to innovate and be creative about what it is that you can achieve,” says Ryan.

Part of CBI’s remit is to support artists, which has been a challenge during the pandemic. Ryan praises authors and illustrators for being “amazing right through lockdown” by sharing their work with children and families online, but warns: “Now all that content is out there for free and they’re worrying, because we thought it was a sprint and actually it’s a marathon.” To help, CBI is reviewing best practice for digital content created by authors and illustrators, and recommended rates of pay for this.

Ryan also believes there is a lot of work to do in terms of “putting the idea out there that writers haven’t had an easy time” during lockdown. She explains: “People seem to think that writers are at home merrily writing away, but the psychological impact of this pandemic has been difficult for them.” Another impact on creators has been the loss of secondary work (e.g. school visits, festival appearances), and CBI has just opened a survey to gauge how much income they will have lost as a result of the pandemic, so that it can start making a case to funders and the government for financial support. It will aim to raise awareness with the country’s Arts Council to make sure that literature gets its share of bursary funding, as well as funding artists directly by building their work into its upcoming projects.

CBI is currently working on is its reading guide for October. The annual guide is normally a round-up of all the “best books of the year”, but owing to the unreliability of the supply chain and publication dates moving around, the organisation has decided to change the slant for the 2020 guide to focus entirely on mental wellbeing. It has partnered on this with the national centre for youth mental health Jigsaw, and Ryan feels there will be “a massive need for it”. CBI is planning a big campaign for the guide around World Mental Health Day in October, and hopes to get additional funding to facilitate visits from authors discussing these themes. Distributing some of the books from the guide in schools is another aim.

Listening closely
Another big focus for the team is a mentorship programme for marginalised voices. CBI is exploring how to develop a holistic programme that will support writers creatively and also give them an overview of the business of publishing. It is also looking to get funding for the project to ensure that mentors are paid for their contribution. Ryan says: “There are a lot of conversations going on that we need to listen to very carefully before we go about launching something. We want to get something in place that will, over years, make a fundamental change to people’s ability to get into the publishing industry.”

Now, CBI is planning for what its schools programme will look like when students go back, but it is proving difficult, as Ireland’s government has not yet provided any guidance on this and teachers have varying expectations. Post-pandemic, Ryan predicts a “massively negative effect” on children and young people  whowere already marginalised or socioeconomically less well off, thanks to a growing divide between children who were at home learning and those “who’ve just dropped off the radar for five or six months”. CBI is preparing for there to be significant need for support in this area.

In terms of positives, Ryan foresees “a huge amount of upskilling and a huge amount of potential access for much wider audiences” thanks to greater use of digital platforms. She also feels that the lockdown has connected the sector, saying: “There’s been a nice sense of community in terms of people being very willing to share their experiences and their knowledge.”