TwLetteratura comes back to Wales with a new social reading project by Cardiff University based on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: now, on Betwyll.
#TwAlice: the wonderland of social reading
After the amazing experience with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, TwLetteratura comes back to Wales for Adventures in Wonderland, a new social reading project by Cardiff University based on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Two years after our first #TwAlice project – run by Italian teacher Paola Mattioli – we will be caught in Lewis Carroll’s imaginative world once again, in-between mad tea-parties and crazy croquet matches.
This new project – led by the Cardiff Institute of Health and Wellbeing (CISHeW) and the Cardiff University School of Social Sciences and funded by City Region Exchange – will test TwLetteratura’s method with different user groups to create reading and social networks that better support their education, health and wellbeing. The project combines old and new technology and reinvents the way people engage with what they are reading, how they share their responses to what they have read – and how they can have fun with it.
The project will be piloted in Blaenau Gwent, both in the public libraries and through its outreach services and will involve elders, people with mild dementia, intergenerational and family learning groups,”isolated” people, economically inactive library users and adult Welsh-language learners, in the attempt to encourage reading, support well-being and address isolation. It will also provide an opportunity to look at how our method can be integrated into the practice of library services.
Thanks to Head4Arts, professional writers/animateurs and an illustrator will be engaged to work alongside the library staff and volunteers to encourage the participants to create imaginative responses to the book and interact with other readers, fostering digital literacy. The project will also link with Aneurin Leisure’s development of ‘dementia –friendly’ venues and Literature Wales’ Reading Friends programme.
#TwAlice: the social reading game
Based on TwLetteratura’s method, we will be playing with the different chapters of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland on Betwyll, TwLetteratura’s app for social reading. Betwyll allows participants to comment on texts through short messages (twylls) of 140 characters and, at the same time, to interact with other readers by sharing “creative conversations” relating to their experience of the text.
Each social reading game follows a shared reading schedule, which for #TwAlice means a chapter every three days (Sundays excluded). The project started with a first warm-up round for librarians and facilitators at the end of May and will go on with other two rounds involving the different reading groups in online and offline activities until October.
Here’s the reading calendar for the third round, from 4 September to 14 October:
- Monday, 4 September – Wednesday, 6 September: Chapter 1 | #TwAlice/01
- Thursday, 7 September – Saturday, 9 September: Chapter 2 | #TwAlice/02
- Monday, 11 September – Wednesday, 13 September: Chapter 3 | #TwAlice/03
- Thursday, 14 September – Saturday, 16 September: Chapter 4 | #TwAlice/04
- Monday, 18 September – Wednesday, 20 September: Chapter 5 | #TwAlice/05
- Thursday, 21 September – Saturday, 23 September: Chapter 6 | #TwAlice/06
- Monday, 25 September – Wednesday, 27 September: Chapter 7 | #TwAlice/07
- Thursday, 28 September – Saturday, 30 September: Chapter 8 | #TwAlice/08
- Monday, 2 October – Wednesday, 4 October: Chapter 9 | #TwAlice/09
- Thursday, 5 October – Saturday, 7 October: Chapter 10 | #TwAlice/10
- Monday, 9 October – Wednesday, 11 October: Chapter 11 | #TwAlice/11
- Thursday, 12 October – Saturday, 14 October: Chapter 12 | #TwAlice/12
Betwyll is available on the App Store or on Google Play.