Fabula is an organisation that aims to promote reading for pleasure and to harness the power of stories to change children’s lives for the better.
Originally set up as a community enterprise, to promote reading for pleasure, Fabula is now an emerging social enterprise serving schools and community groups across Leicestershire. Last year Fabula was awarded £1,000 from the Social Enterprise Fund to help towards its start-up costs.
Fabula used the funding to help with its launch programme which included taking a group of volunteers to the Curve Theatre as part of The Spark Children’s Arts Festival. Fabula also delivered a story experience for a county school open day and presented a whole year-group event where they trained volunteers for a six-week pilot in a primary school.
Fabula was founded by Macha Barnden, who has been promoting reading for pleasure for the last ten years. While reviewing the success of Fabula’s work at Curve , Macha said: “At our book activity during the Spark festival one parent brought her children two-days running. She said her children fought a lot at home, and weren’t that interested in books, but that they had been amused all afternoon, so had come back for a second day.”
Parents and children have expressed their views on Fabula’s work in its first year via its written feedback book. One child said: “Awesome!!!” “Epic!” “I enjoyed it today at the curve”. And a parent at the Curve event wrote: “Fabulous ideas for creative writing and story-telling – thankyou”
A parent at the school open day said: “My three boys really enjoyed creating a story at Fabula. Lots of Fun!!”
More than 150 children and adults have benefitted from the work carried out by Fabula during its first year. Fabula has plenty of plans for the year ahead including training more volunteers to go into schools and lots outreach ideas and events that we would like to take out to communities next year.
Macha said: “We are very grateful for the support of Leicestershire and Rutland Community Foundation, as we would not have been able to achieve so much this year without this funding.”
If you would like to set up your own fund that works to support charities and groups in the local community, contact Katy Green, Chief Executive at Leicestershire and Rutland Community Foundation: katy.green@llrcommunityfoundation.org.uk & 0116 2624 916.
