National Year of Reading - EmpathyLab

For the National Year of Reading, we are sharing a series of short conversations with people who are involved in promoting reading with young people. This could be a programme, resources or a literary event, and we're giving them the opportunity to share what they do and how people can get involved.

In this episode we are joined by Imogen Bond from EmpathyLab

EmpathyLab develops, activates, and celebrates the power of stories to increase real-life empathy. Through reading, they help children and young people understand others, grow emotionally, and thrive. Through free events and resources to school programmes and learning webinars, EmpathyLab offers the tools to turn empathy into action. Look out for their Empathy Day Festival running 4-11 June 2026. 

Transcript

Katy 0:11

Hi, I'm Katy. I'm Ali, and welcome to Mostly Book Talk. This episode is part of our series of short episodes about charities and what they're doing in the national year of reading.

Ali 0:21

And in this episode, we welcome Imogen Bond, who's the managing director of Empathy Lab.

Ali 0:29

We are delighted to welcome Imogen Bond, Managing Director of Empathy Lab, to Mostly Book Talk. Our first question is tell us a bit about Empathy Lab and what it is.

Imogen 0:40

We've been going for 10 years now. We just had our 10th birthday last year, and we exist to celebrate and activate and help everybody understand the way in which books and stories can develop our empathy skills. We work with schools, libraries, parents, and we have a number of different programs that mean that we can share training with the adults that work with children and young people, live and work with them, so that they can really understand the brain science of how our brains are impacted by books and the psychology and neuroscience evidence that there is to show how books can really develop our real life empathy, and then turn that into really practical everyday tools that they can use in the classroom or at home or in their library or bookshop to help young people to develop those really human skills of understanding others, even when we don't always agree, especially when we don't always agree, understanding their own thoughts and feelings, being able to untangle those and taking the perspectives of others so that really we can use stories to make real world change. That's what we're doing.

Ali 1:58

And is that CPD for teachers? Is it in that kind of form rather than working directly with schools?

Imogen 2:06

Yeah, so predominantly we work with adults to enable them to develop their ways of working. So we have a CBD program, but it's more like a kind of whole school approach that we take. So we enable schools to embed empathy as a core skill, as a core value within their skill that they practice through reading and use of stories. So that's our sort of predominant work, the way that we work with schools to do that. So we train teachers, we train senior leaders in schools to help them think about this as a whole school approach. How do they use diverse, really high-quality literature across their curriculum, but also to think about how they might bring families and their links socially in their local community into that understanding of how stories can change things in real life as well. So, yeah, predominantly it's kind of CPD for adults, but then we also have a big free program that happens every year in the summer. So we have the Empathy Day Festival, and that's our big child-facing free event. So schools, libraries, families, bookshops, anywhere where children and stories come together can get involved in that, and that's lots of resources to use with children directly. So whether they're activity sheets and practical activities that are creative and use stories, or whether it's little author films that we produce or live events with authors, we just are encouraging everybody in June through that week to ge t involved, jump into someone else's story, and really explore the power of reading to change the real world.

Ali 3:49

Yeah, and it's still called Empathy Day, isn't it? But it's the kind of week now.

Imogen 3:52

Yeah, exactly. It's Empathy Day, which this year is on the 11th of June, but we are celebrating that for a week in the run-up to it. So that's why it's a festival, because there's all sorts of things taking place across

Ali 4:05

that's really cool.

Katy 4:06

And is that primary and secondary? What age group does it cover?

Imogen 4:10

Everybody. So we suggest from three upwards we do some early years work and we've got an early years toolkit for that as well. But primary, secondary, and anybody really can get involved. There's no cut-off age limit. I think it's still just as important. Empathy skill is an ongoing practice, nobody's perfect at it. So we can all always do our best to develop our empathy skill, whatever our age. So intergenerational, I would say.

Katy 4:39

And you have lists, don't you, of books that you recommend each year. How do you come up with those lists and how do you anticipate those being used?

Imogen 4:47

Yeah, our other core programme is the Read for Empathy Collection. So we produce that every February, and this year it was 65 titles for suitable for all ages, from three to 16 plus. It's diverse in every way you can imagine from across all genres, including non-fiction, poetry, graphics, as well as diverse in terms of author, but also in terms of theme and the way the things that the books explore. So we're trying to give a really practical resource for the adults living and working with children to find empathy-rich books. So any book could be an empathy-building book used in the right way. Little Red Riding Hood can be empathy building, but there are texts because of the quality of the writing and because of the diversity of the breadth of rich theme that it might offer, they can be really specifically used for particular empathy-building skills. So that might be in the way that it might cover a topic that's not talked about so much through children's literature. So, like one of the books on the on the list this year is a book from Barrington Stoke called Jelly Bean, which is about a school refuser, and it's told from her point of view. There's not many books out there for that, but it's such an important topic, and important that young people can, if they are in that situation themselves, that they can see themselves in that book, and it might help them untangle some of their own complicated feelings around that. But also, maybe the adults, the teachers who are dealing with children who are school refusing, can maybe get an insight into how that feels from the other side of it. So books like that, we'd want to highlight the ones that you know could be used in a particular circumstance, but really we're looking for brilliant, diverse, excellent quality writing with really richly drawn characters. So we work with the publishers to collate that list together, and then we use it as the backbone of our year. So all of the work that we do with schools, all of the work that we do with libraries and our training all comes from that collection of books.

Ali 7:02

Great. That's really interesting. So are you doing anything specific for the National Year of Reading?

Imogen 7:08

Yeah, so our big kind of collaboration with the National Year of Reading is happening during the Empathy Day Festival. You might have heard of the Big Lunch. That is something that the Eden Project and their partners have run every year, and it's an opportunity for communities to come together and share food and join together and find out a bit more about each other. And so this year, working with the National Year of Reading and with the Big Lunch and the Big Do, we're all joining forces to invite communities wherever, you know, whether you're a school, a library, a bookshop, a community centre, on your street with your neighbours to come together, enjoy a big lunch, and whilst you're doing that, jump into someone else's story and get to know the people around you a bit better. So at Empathy Lab, we're producing a whole load of resources for that, which will be about prompting empathy chats with each other so that you can get to know your fellow lunchers really well. And those are written by children from all across the country. And really brilliant questions to get to know people in a deeper way. But we also have got some book and story recommendations. So some of those will be book titles, but some of those will be free short stories that we call the empathy shorts that are written for us as empathy-rich 500-word stories that are just sit on our website and are free to use. And there'll be all sorts of other kind of creative resources to use at your big lunch event. So it's a great opportunity to bring your community together, get to know each other, share stories together.

Ali 8:48

And will those resources be on the big lunch as well as Empathy Lab?

Imogen 8:52

Yeah, so it's a big collaboration. So it sits as one of our challenge activities within the Empathy Day Festival. So you can either get everything you need through us, or you can go to the big lunch and download their resources and get the same pack via them. So it's a sort of interlinked way of working. Well done. Yeah, brilliant.

Katy 9:13

And what date is that? So is there a specific date for it? What date is that?

Imogen 9:17

It's the 5th to the 8th of June. So it's right in the middle of the Empathy Day Festival, which is 4th to the 11th of June. So it's that middle weekend. So, you know, anybody interested in reading and stories, bring your folk together, share stories, have a lovely time. And it doesn't have to be a lunch. You can do a picnic and get everyone to bring their own sandwich or do squash and biscuits or tea and cake or whatever you want to do. There's no rules. It's just a great way to bring folk together who you might not normally spend that much time with or get to know that well. But share a story together, share some food, have a fun time and see what happens.

Ali 9:55

That's interesting because one of our questions was how do people join in? Yes. It's a really great way to join in.

Imogen 10:01

It's a really great way to join in, and I think it's a perfect way for organizations to organise between them internally, and maybe invite families in, but schools, libraries, bookshops, community centres, anyone. I'm gonna try and do one on my street. It'll be fun. Who knows who'll turn up, but we'll get some story sharing going on, so that'll be really nice.

Ali 10:22

Yeah, I was thinking that as well. We normally once a year try and deal with a street party, but no one's organised anything yet. So maybe that's the weekend to do it.

Imogen 10:29

Yeah, here you go. That's your reason to get together, support the National Year of Reading, and take part that way. Yeah, you could do book swaps and everything, couldn't you? Really, so much fun.

Katy 10:40

Yeah. No, that would be good. And in terms of the empathy festival, how do people get involved in that? Where do they find that?

Imogen 10:48

It's just on our website or via our social media. So they just have a look on there. They need to register to access everything. But if you register now, it's totally free to take part and get access. But register now and you can get the toolkit already, and then after Easter, we'll have all of our activity printable resource ready to go. And then from the 18th of May, you'll be able to get hold of all of our digital content. So we're making, I think it's 10, maybe 10 on-demand films that you can use during the festival or any time you wish, because empathy is for life, not just for the festival. So once you've got the hold of the resource, people are really welcome to use it however they want to, but we just ask that they register. But we've got loads of brilliant author films. We've just announced our lineup. We've got some really great live events with people like Louis Stoll and oh, all names will go out of my head now. But some really SF Said, all sorts of really brilliant people. But we've got a fantastic lineup. And yeah, have a look because there's something for everyone in there for all ages, but it's all about connection. So jumping into someone else's story to connect, understand yourself better, understand somebody else, do something for people and planet, make a change. So that's what we're doing.

Ali 12:09

Sounds great. All the stuff about connecting and sharing stories is great, but is there research behind the reason why empathy is at the heart of the work you that you do?

Imogen 12:19

Yeah, there is. We were really lucky actually. Over the last 10 years, we've been working with Professor Robin Bannerjee, who's a psychology professor from the University of Sussex, and we've been working with him for 10 years. But last year, they this his team at Sussex brought out a really brilliant new study, and they had been working, it's the first longitudinal study of its kind to be done in UK primary schools. So it was a quite a groundbreaking thing that they did, and we worked with them on that and to share the evidence from it as well. So what that study showed, it was called the Reading Feelings Project. And what they did was they went into primary schools and they measured how they wanted to look, first of all, at how empathy is built through reading. So they were looking at specific, there are different kinds of empathy. There's our affective empathy, how we feel with somebody, feeling along with them, but there's also our cognitive empathy, how we understand somebody else's perspective and point of view. And they were really looking at how does reading actively build? What is it that actively builds those different empathy skills? And they found that the way in which we've always approached empathy building through stories, so using creative activity and using immersive ways of stepping into the story, and using empathy-focused book talk, which is really focused on how the characters are feeling. So dead simple, really focused on the character and their experience, as opposed to the literacy skill from the writer. If you add all of those things together, then you are developing empathy, and they can now prove that, they can see the difference over time. But they also discovered almost by accident, as they were doing this work, they weren't expecting to find this, but they found that in the children where this work had been done and their empathy had developed, it also more strongly developed their reading skill. So it's not just that reading builds empathy, it's that if you build empathy, someone's ability to understand another's emotions and feelings through reading, you also activate their reading engagement, their reading enjoyment, and therefore their reading ability. So there's this lovely cyclical process that happens. So I suppose what we're saying as part of the National Year of Reading is if we are worried about children not reading and not really enjoying reading, one of the best ways that is now proven to support that is to go in with that empathy lens. So if you ask about the characters and how they're feeling and support that creative engagement and immersion in the story, then you're going to really spark their love of reading and therefore their reading ability. So it could be like a little new, fresh way of thinking about engaging children with books, not through the literacy lens, but through the empathic lens. Of course, literacy is important, of course it is, but we're just saying we can do both very simply at the same time and build reading engagement. So it feels very positive to us that new research has just come out, and I suppose that's what we really want to invite people to focus on through the National Year of Reading and as part of its legacy as well. So, how do we really use reading for that purpose of building our social and emotional skills as well as our literacy skill?

Katy 16:04

Yeah, that's really interesting. It makes it intuitively makes sense, doesn't it? That if you can connect with the stories, if you can empathize and feel what the characters are going through, then you're going to be more engaged in it. And engagement actually builds that virtuous cycle of wanting to read and wanting to know what happens next and caring about the outcomes in books.

Imogen 16:26

Yeah, all great research.

Ali 16:28

It's totally obvious when you actually but it's nice, but it's great to have the research behind it that it's not you've yeah, exactly. It's really important.

Katy 16:39

So, in terms of the national year of reading, what are your broader hopes? What do you hope it it will achieve?

Imogen 16:45

Well, I hope that it's just the start, really. I think it's important that it's just the beginning and that this is a great moment to go. Actually, what are the benefits of reading? How do we get people excited about it? How do we get them engaged in wanting to do it? But then how do we carry on that momentum for the years beyond? So I think we can't turn it around in one year. The decline has been happening over such a length of time now that it's going to take time to change it. But I'm really hopeful actually that with this sort of light shone on it this year, that from the end of 2026 onwards that we can start to really build that engagement and enjoyment and fun of reading. And I suppose that means for me, that means young people like leading the way in that, that it's about their choices. And I know we always talk about choice and voice and you know how important that is, but it's still surprising the number of children who go, Oh, I'm not really allowed to read that, or I've been told that's not very good for me. Let's just let them read whatever they want to read and not worry about it. All reading is excellent reading, as far as I'm concerned.

Katy 18:02

Very good, very good message.

Ali 18:04

Yeah, thank you very much.

Imogen 18:06

That's all right. Thank you.