Manchester Imagination Library

Manchester Imagination Library (charity number 1177843) (formerly known as Gorton Imagination Library) is led by volunteers and staff from Sure Start, Read Manchester, Voluntary Organisations, Housing and various schools.

We have been running the Imagination Library since June 2015 and through successful funding applications and strong partnership working we have reached over 740 children aged under 5 years old who live across Gorton, Levenshulme, Longsight, Cheetham Hill, Crumpsall, Harpurhey, Clayton and Openshaw and gifted over 51,000 books.

Children who are registered with the Imagination Library receive a book addressed to them each month to their home address.

The Imagination Library supports the whole family by linking with various partner agencies e.g. Sure Start, Voluntary Organisations, Housing, Local Library, Adult Education etc.

Reading activities and ready for school sessions are delivered and facilitated by Sure Start in the Children’s Centres, local library and schools.

Parents are signposted to volunteering and training opportunities to support them back into employment and further education. If you are interested in becoming a Champion for Manchester Imagination Library, please register your interest on our contact page.

Understanding the value of the Imagination Library, a number of primary schools have contributed to the project to enable their nursery cohort to receive a book a month. The primary schools involved in the project use the ‘book of the month’ in their lessons which tie in with the whole reading experience and the child’s transition from home to school.

Our Aims

Encouraging a love of reading for pleasure.
Increasing the frequency of reading in the home.
Supporting the development of early literacy skills.
Supporting the children to be ready for school
Support adults back into work through accessing volunteering and training opportunities

Our Mission

To promote early education for the public benefit in particular, but not exclusively, by the provision of free, high quality books for children aged under 5 living in Manchester.

Comments from parents

“My child was reading the Ladybird book from the project and we saw on the side of a bus that this was at the Lowry Theatre. The whole family went to the theatre and all enjoyed it”.

“He has developed interest in books as there are loads more books around him than toys. I love the way he turns the pages starting with interest”.

“To be able to bring the books into our bedtime routine has helped her to be asleep at a proper time”.

“It allows my son to have a present every month. We are a low income family and anything that helps financially is great”.

“As our English is not very good we were worried about how we were going to support our child reading the book – but the older siblings have been reading the book with them and this has also helped both me and my husband with our English”.

“He is very advanced with his speech and vocabulary and I believe having such a wide range of books has helped this”.

Comments from schools

“We are pleased to say that Imagination Library has contributed towards a fantastic increase in children working at age related”.

“The nursery children and their parents have thoroughly enjoyed the books from Imagination Library. The children really enjoyed sharing their favourite parts and what the characters were like. Many parents expressed their appreciation during the parent consultations and said the books have really encouraged their children to read and look at books”

What Manchester Imagination Library think about getting the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service?

We are overwhelmed to receive the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service, which reflects on the work carried out by the volunteers of the project. Most importantly though is that we have received this award on behalf of the families who have benefitted from this project and we will carry on applying for funds and working with partners to enable the project to reach ALL children aged under 5 years across Manchester.