Public/Private: how both sectors can learn from each other

Amy’s inspirational post yesterday describing her move into children’s publishing from the education sector has got us all thinking about the pros and cons of working in the public and private sectors and how they can learn from each other.

I have had the benefit of working for both sectors, moving from publishing to the amazing charity Booktrust and back again into publishing. The Bookstart Bear represents the perfect public/private partnership. Here he is carrying the Olympic torch!

Children’s publishers are a strange beast in the private sector. They produce wonderful, inspiring books to help children love books and reading and are well supported by teachers and librarians, but they are also a business with stakeholders who are looking for a return on their investments. The simple business of acquiring and selling rights in children’s books is not the most lucrative one and no-one who works in children’s publishing would say they are in it for the money, but it is nether-the-less a business run for profit which thrives on competition.

Charities on the other hand are not-for-profit, and generally run on a complicated mix of public and private sector money. Booktrust for example is funded by the government via the Arts Council and directly to run its book-gifting programmes including Bookstart, which prides itself on its public/private partnerships. Generally this means that publishers provide books at cost with some money for marketing with the government paying for the administration and distribution. The prizes normally rely on media sponsors and foundations such as the BBC, The Sunday Times, the Independent and the Roald Dahl Foundation.

This model is obviously vulnerable to changes in government (Bookstart was a project very dear to Gordon Brown’s heart) and sponsors – I saw Nestle, JLR, the Teenage Prize, Early Years Awards and Orange sponsorships all disappearing as priorities changed for the sponsors and foundations.

Back in December 2010 Booktrust was told from one day to the next that they would lose its £3 million funding of the schools programmes. With the power of Twitter, there was uproar from the public and authors rallied round to save us culminating in an amazing headline in the Observer on Boxing Day 2010 and rapid back-peddling from the government. Now Booktrust is campaigning to keep public money for their programmes with their Bookstart 20 campaign.

Now I have moved back into the private sector to join a brand new publisher – a very rare thing to find these days, but one full of passionate, experienced and knowledgeable people prepared to work differently to the rest of the industry, explore different models of funding by partnering with organisations like the Arts Council and most importantly work transparently, a very refreshing thing in the private sector.

So, over to you. Tell us about your experiences of working for the private and public sectors and how they can learn from each other.

Guest Blog by People Doing Things about Literacy

Hello from another newbie

It’s all dead exciting this, innit? What’s not to like about a brand new publishing company bringing lots of lovely new books into the world? But Hot Key aren’t the only ones doing exciting new things.

Award-winning children’s authors, Barry Hutchison (that’s me!) and Tommy Donbavand, have just launched a brand new online magazine designed to help boost literacy levels in children. Aimed at teachers, librarians, parents – in fact anyone with an interest in getting kids reading and writing – the magazine is crammed full of tricks and techniques to make literacy lessons the highlight of the week.

We’ve been running school events since about 2007 and between us visit around 300 schools a year doing talks and leading writing workshops. We never fail to be amazed by the response we get, particularly from teachers who always ask if they can “borrow” some of the techniques we use to get even reluctant pupils engaged in the writing lesson.

So that got us thinking – how could we share all those little tricks on a wider scale? How could we make it easier for teachers to get their pupils hooked on writing and reading? Start the Story is what we came up with.

It’s a bi-monthly digital magazine with accompanying pupil worksheets which are ready to be printed off and used in class. As well as lots of fun writing exercises, each issue includes a complete lesson plan, homework activities, author interviews, and recommended books for everyone from the most reluctant reader to the most advanced.

We’re also going to be launching some ongoing projects via the magazine – a campaign to get every school producing its own creative writing newsletter, for example – and schools will be able to share their “best practice” via the member’s area of the website.

I’m sure just like Hot Key, we have loads of ideas we want to roll out in the coming months, and the hard part is not blabbing about them all too soon. With literacy levels continuing to plummet, and fewer and fewer children reading for pleasure, we felt that we had to do something to help tackle the problem, so watch this space to discover all the things we’ve come up with.

Well, not THIS space. This space: http://www.startthestory.co.uk/

Huge thanks to Hot Key for letting us commandeer their blog for this post. If Start the Story sounds up your street, head along to the website to grab issue one right now, absolutely free!

Cheers,

 

Barry and Tommy

@StartTheStory