London book benches: are you sitting comfortably?

Wind in the Willows bench by artist Mik Richardson (to be situated at the Financial institution of England, not on the Thames), for NLT

Visitors to London will ready to take pleasure in books in a new way up coming summer – by sitting on them.

A series of benches developed as open books – from Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows to George Orwell’s 1984 – will go on display for ten weeks as element of a literary trail, under a fundraising scheme launched by the literary charity the Nationwide Literacy Trust.

JM Barrie’s Peter Pan and Michael Rosen’s We’re Going on a Bear Hunt are amongst the 1st batch of commissions, after children’s publishers Walker Books and tax advisors KPMG joined up as sponsors.

It is hoped that ample company backers will come forward to develop 50 to 70 “BookBenches,” which will be positioned in suitable websites across the capital in July.

If all goes to prepare, the Wind in the Willows bench will be found not on the banking institutions of the Thames, but beside the Bank of England, the place Kenneth Grahame was doing work as secretary when the book was published in 1908, said a Literacy Believe in spokeswoman. She additional that it hadn’t but been made the decision the place the bench for 1984 – Orwell’s excellent totalitarian dystopia – would go, “but we’re open to ideas, and to sponsorship for it.”

Michael Rosen stated Coram’s Fields would be his decision for the Bear Hunt bench. “It really is the world’s initial goal-developed playground nonetheless in use, so in a way, it’s a rare monument to the significance of perform.”

He extra: “I adore the idea of sitting on giant books. With the Bear Hunt huge BookBench, I suppose you can say that you cannot go via it, but you can go more than it, you can go underneath it or far better still you can sit on it. I think that individuals seeing BookBenches in the street will chuckle and remind every single other about a very good reading through experience.”

The scheme is getting run in partnership with Wild in Art, professionals in public artwork sculpture trails, who worked on site-specific art for the London 2012 Olympics.

The benches will be auctioned off right after their time in the sun, to raise money for the Believe in, an independent charity set up to deal with reduced literacy ranges in deprived communities in the Uk.

1984 bench by Thomas Dowdeswell, for NLT

Jonathan Douglas, director of the Nationwide Literacy Trust, said: “We are delighted to be launching Books about Town to spread the enjoy of reading through across the capital.” 

The scheme is open to potential sponsors right up until December.

Final week, the Nationwide Literacy Trust launched a separate project, Books Unlocked, which will introduce prisoners at 16 jails across the country to novels longlisted for the Guy Booker prize. The scheme, which is run in partnership with the Booker Prize Basis, was launched at HMP Wandsworth with a reading and Q&ampA by novelist AD Miller from his Moscow-set crime novel Snowdrops, shortlisted in 2011.

London book benches: are you sitting comfortably?