Reading on Screen is a collaboration between the universities of Bournemouth and Brighton funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

The project follows on from two previous projects at Bournemouth University funded by the AHRC (www.researchingreadersonline.com | www.digitalreadingnetwork.com) and is intended to share the findings of the previous projects with members of the public.

The new project is designed to capture the stories of readers living through the technological advances of the last decades which have resulted in more and more people ‘reading on screen’. The project team, Bronwen Thomas (BU), Ross Adamson and Isobel Creed (both University of Brighton) will work closely with DigiTales, a participatory media company based in London, to host workshops in Bournemouth, Sheffield and Brighton designed to produce around 20-30 digital stories. The project is also supported by The Reading Agency, a charity dedicated to inspiring people to read more.

Digital storytelling is an established creative workshop process for 8-10 people working with trained facilitators to produce short (2 – 3 minutes) digital videos.  At the end of each workshop, each participant will have written and produced his or her own digital story and will have shared their stories within the group. Participants usually have no prior experience of using digital technologies in such filmmaking.

Stories from the project will feature on the website (www.readingonscreen.co.uk) and will also appear on YouTube. We hope that these stories will provide a valuable resource for schools, reading charities and libraries, stimulating debate on the topic of reading and demonstrating the effectiveness of digital storytelling for empowering participants to find their voice. You can see some of the videos from the project so far below.

The project will conclude in December/January 2018 with an exhibition at Brighton’s City Campus Media Centre, a state of the art media facility. This will feature screenings of the stories including a digital story of the workshops produced by the Project Team.

Re kindle a reader by Alan Loach

Awards

Project PI Professor Bronwen Thomas has recently been the receipient of a prestigious award for her academic research work on literacy in the digital age. The announcement was made at the World Literacy Awards hosted by the World Literacy Foundation with 5,300 attendees from 52 countries who joined the online ceremony. Find out more and watch the World Literacy Awards 2021 ceremony.