Charity Awards 2010: Winner: Bag Books
Bag Books is a national charity producing multi-sensory stories for children and adults with profound learning disabilities. There are over 300,000 of these children and adults in the UK. Bag Books is the only organisation in the UK producing multi-sensory stories. It is our strong belief that people with special needs should not be excluded from learning. Bag Books are not like ordinary books. They are multi-sensory stories comprising a large print storyboard and a series of A3 page cards. Each line of the story is matched with a specially selected object on the page-card, which listeners are helped to access hand-over-hand. These objects engage the senses of sight, sound, touch, smell and motion. Bag Books exist for those who cannot benefit from mainstream books and are told interactively, through actions and emotions rather than words and pictures.
Our key areas of focus:
The design and production of a range of multi-sensory books. We have 39 titles covering a wide range of age-appropriate stories - for children, teenagers and adults.
Providing multi-sensory storytelling sessions. In 2009, over 1,200 children took part on one of our storytelling sessions.
Training. In 2009, we trained over 500 people - parents, carers, teachers and librarians - in multi-sensory storytelling technique.
bagbooks.org