Meet the Mancunian - Talking reading and stories with Caroline England

Meet the Mancunian -5.10-Caroline England-transcript

Intro

Welcome to the fifth season of the Meet the Mancunian podcast, social impact stories from Manchester. I'm Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe, your friendly host. It's a privilege and a pleasure for me to interview some of the most inspiring people working in Manchester's social impact sector and feature them on this podcast.

My guests are leaders and worker bees associated as employees, trustees, and volunteers with social enterprises, non-profits, and community groups. They share their life stories and passions with you, dear listener. My aim through this podcast is to inspire you and share a bit of good news.

My guests tackle serious concerns in Manchester but many of these are also universal themes resonating in many parts of the globe. All my guests talk about the power of collaboration and how together we are stronger. They, of course, expand on their pride in Manchester and Mancunians as well.

I hope you enjoy listening to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, or Google, or any of your favourite podcasting platforms. You can also listen to the podcast episodes and read the transcripts on my website www.meetthemancunian.co.uk.

If you are a new listener, you can log on to www.meetthemancunian.co.uk to listen to the first four seasons of the podcast, and read more about my podcasting story. If you are a returning listener, welcome back. Thank you for your support.

Welcome to the eleventh episode of the Meet the Mancunian podcast, season five.

Looking to help children connect with absent loved ones? We hear from Caroline England, Founder, Featherbed Tales in this episode.

Episode 11

[00:00:00] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I am delighted to introduce my guest, Caroline England, Founder, Featherbed Tales. Thank you so much, Caroline, for taking the time today.

[00:00:09] Caroline England: That's my pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.

[00:00:12] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: So first, tell us about how you found your passion for storytelling. Looking forward to hearing about that.

[00:00:19] Caroline England: I guess I have always really loved writing. I've always loved stories. I have always loved the impact that stories can have on people in terms of the wellbeing aspects of it, taking you to another world taking you outside your own environment but also the fact that they're the absolute basis of development of young children and of us all in terms of reading and speech and language development.

And, it's, I guess, later in life that I have come to the realisation that that is what I've always wanted to do. I sort of always knew that, but I was never sure that I would follow that path.

And so, when I came around the idea of the importance of the voices, of the people that we know and love as well. And I thought that there might be some way that we could combine stories with the voices of our families and our loved ones. I decided that was going to start me in a new direction.

[00:01:20] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you for sharing that. And that is fascinating from your passion for first writing... Most of us started with a passion for reading, but writing is, obviously, being more creative and then going into understanding the emotive part of voices. That is very interesting.

So tell us about how you started Featherbed Tales and what it does.

[00:01:41] Caroline England: I guess having always written. I came to the conclusion that it was time, I had a big birthday, and it was a now or never moment. So, it was either the time to do something about it and to progress down that path or to decide that one day I might regret it.

And actually, I was going to leave it to one side, and I'm not big on regret as a person, so I felt that, I really ought to give this a shot. So, I started thinking about getting into writing a bit more seriously and publishing stories that I had written. But around that time, I was coming to the end of a job, which was also very timely.

But in addition to that, there were a couple of events that really showed me the power of voices and made me think that it's something that as a society we undervalue, but also that we miss and there's something potentially really powerful that we can do with it. A good friend of mine died from a brain tumour, and she left a little boy who was really too young to remember her.

He was about 4-5 when she died. Just conscious that at that age, you don't really remember very much. So, his memories of his mother would be very limited. Now, one day when I was tidying his bedroom, I came across a little book and it was a book that had photos in it with those buttons that you can press.

And I pressed this button. There was a picture of my friend, and her voice came out saying, hello, I'm your new mummy. And this was a book that they had created for him when they adopted him and hearing her voice for me, it was a hairs on the back of the neck moment, but also it just reinforced for me how impactful hearing someone's voice can be, and maybe in the same way as a sense of smell.

When you smell something, it can instantly take you back to a particular point in time or a particular place. And I think voices do that in a very similar way and in a way that actually is more powerful than perhaps seeing a photograph of someone on their own. So that was sort of the starting point.

And then, around the same time I was about to do a lake swim and I was standing next to another woman. She was in a wetsuit and a hat, absolutely clueless as to who she was until she spoke. And the instant that she spoke, I knew that we had been friends as teenagers. And that for me, I think was probably the moment that crystallised.

There is something here that I want to do something with, and I don't think other people have done it. So, I'm going to have a go and do it and do it myself. And combining my love of stories, my love of helping people or inspiring people to be creative to write their own stories, but also that love of stories, of reading, of the connections that reading as a parent can make with children or as a grandparent with children, just seemed to me that there was something very magical that that could be created. And so that's really, how I started on my journey and it's been a lot of fun.

There've been a lot of challenges along the way. I'm not a technology person, so my background is not tech. So, finding the right partner to develop the tech was challenging. But after a few full starts, I now work with a very fabulous company software house actually that's based in Edinburgh. But, they've been great to work with and it took about two years to develop the app, which is in fact embedded in our website, but also to develop the illustration.

We have a very wonderful illustrator who's an artist in South Africa. She's based in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, and her illustrations definitely bring a touch of South African sunshine into our stories. That's how we started. And our story collection is a series of digital picture books, greetings cards, and nursery rhymes and other stories that are all beautifully illustrated. Using these illustrations where you can then record your own voice.

And you can overlay that, or it automatically overlays that onto one of our storybooks. And you can then share that with anybody anywhere in the world. So grandparents who are half a world away can listen to a story in the voice of a little grandchild or either grandparent can record that and send it to the child. Because children love repetition as well.

That can be a really lovely thing. So, a child wants to sit down and listen to that story because they can hear the voice of someone and people who are apart from that person grandparents or possibly a parent who's traveling or a child who's away in hospital.

All of those people can be connected through the power of stories. Difficult times in our lives, stories have that power to transport us to another world. And a study in a hospital in Brazil with children who were in intensive care, who were in quite a lot of pain and in very difficult circumstances. This study showed that listening to a story, they described it as the most cost-effective form of pain relief that you could give to a child.

So for me, that summarises, I think the massive power that stories can have in our lives and the impact they can have on wellbeing. They actually do, through the study they do reduce the perception of pain and the amount of painkillers that a child would need. So probably, when I first started looking at this, that would've been way beyond my wildest imagination.

But something that can be really very beautiful to connect people and to make them feel that they are playing a part in someone's life when maybe they can't be there.

[00:07:40] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you so much for sharing that, and it does sound like a wonderful concept. You talked about one of the challenges being technology. Are there other challenges you've had to overcome to bring Featherbed tales to customers?

[00:07:53] Caroline England: There are lots of challenges. I guess for any tech start-up, there are going to be difficulties. I guess the main thing is getting people to be aware of it. It's a very crowded marketplace out there, both in terms of children's picture books, but also in terms of access to communication forms or media that people will see that they will engage with. And I guess for us, that's probably the major challenge that we have.

We tend to work with organisations so that we work through them to a third party. So, for example, our books are available free of charge, or all of our content is available free of charge to people who live in certain regions of the country because they're provided through their library service.

So, for example, I know this isn't relevant to Manchester, but for example, in County Durham, in the county of Suffolk and in parts of London, in the Borough of Newham, our storybooks are available free of charge to everybody. So that helps. But obviously libraries have their own agenda. And their own priorities and focus of what they want to be talking to people about.

Wherever I can, I go out and I do story times. I'm actually going up to the Lake District for some story times on World Book Day, which is coming up next week actually. And, I do work with the National Literacy Trust as well. So going out with them, they're really positive about the potential for our stories to help children develop speech and language and to develop that love of learning, and that love of books, which is the absolute foundation for all academic development really.

[00:09:37] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you and that sounds wonderful. On World Book Day, you're going to be at Lake District. I was there yesterday and it’s a very pretty part of the world of course.

[00:09:47] Caroline England: Yeah, absolutely. Lovely part of the world. It is one of my favourites.

[00:09:51] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: What impact would you say you've made so far? You've talked about the research showing that it helps with pain release, but are there other ways you can talk about the impact? Maybe a couple of case studies or, any way you would like to answer that.

[00:10:04] Caroline England: Yes, definitely. One of the areas that we've been looking at is working at working with people with motor neuron disease, so, people who have this very debilitating and terminal illness are likely to lose their voice. So, we work with the MND Association in the UK and they offer our storybooks free of charge to anyone who is diagnosed with MND.

And we are starting to do that across the world as well. So we currently work with MND New Zealand and we have other discussions that are ongoing, in other parts of the world as well, where they can access a storybook and the beautiful thing there, although it can be potentially quite a difficult conversation to start, is to enable people to record their voice before they lose it.

I listened to Rob Burrow on the radio quite some months ago now, but he was talking about no longer being able to read a story to his children. And obviously if you come through Featherbed Tales, then you can still sit down with a child, they can still hear your voice reading a story that you've recorded before your voice was lost. So that's something that is I think, a lasting legacy of creating forever memories. And also when listening to it, children will remember the times that they sat down with their parents.

And it's not just for little ones. Our stories are suitable. We have a range of stories, and some of them are suitable for adults as well as children. I guess that's one example. You talked a little bit about the speech and language, and that impact and one of the examples that we had, which was a bit surprising to us, really because when, when we started, we expected it would be more older people and parents who were recording for children.

But we then came to see that there were as many children recording as there were older people. But when you listen to a recording of a child and you can hear the way they use language, they can listen back to it and it can help to reinforce their use of sound, their pronunciation, and just help them really in that journey.

And a similar way to a foreign language programme. Very often those involve recording yourself saying something and then listening back. And then obviously, that makes it much easier to hear what you did that maybe you could improve. So that helps both with the development of the way you speak, but also with fluency and oracy, which are becoming very big issues in schools.

So just moving on from that to one more thing that's linked to that, Deepa When we found that children were starting to record themselves, we looked a little bit more at the impact on children and how that ties in with reading and their engagement with stories and books.

And I can think of an example where there's a little boy called Noah, he has an Auntie Bev. And Auntie Bev recorded a storybook for him. Noah is two, and his mom finds it really difficult to get him to sit down and read a storybook. I don't think that's probably a problem that is unique to Noah's mom.

Having had a little boy myself, I know that they can be challenging to get them to sit still. So she recorded the story and it's so engaging. She says, hi Noah, it's Auntie Bev here. And when he listens to the story, he says Hi, straight back to her. And, then she engages him in the story, Noah, the crocodile’s coming. Are you ready to snap with your arms?

So now a little boy who didn't like stories, he now asks for this book every night. For us, that was an unexpected benefit that potentially encouraging children into reading is a very powerful thing too. 50% of children don't like reading, don't like books, and...

[00:14:11] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: oh, my!

[00:14:12] Caroline England: The basis for children at school and for their development is so strongly linked to their ability to read. I mean, it's the foundation of everything really in early years, but also in subsequent years too. So for us, that's a really wonderful outcome that, we would like people to learn about, particularly as we've got lots of content on our website that's free for everybody.

There are nursery rhymes. There are books without words, which is a really lovely way to engage children in a story to either tell the story themselves. Or where, you know, a grandparent or a parent could ask the child questions about the storybook, can you point to or can you see something orange in the picture? So, can be really nice ways to engage children in a fun way that feels very, very personal to themselves.

[00:15:05] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you. These are all really great examples..

[00:15:08] Caroline England: The other thing I would mention was that obviously in terms of Manchester so my daughter was treated for Graves Disease at the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital.

She's cured now. She's fine. Now that's an autoimmune disease. It was cured. So she spent quite a bit of time at Royal Manchester Children's Hospital and since then we've been working with the play team there to enable all children who are spending time in the hospital to have our storybooks.

So those are free for any child who is in Royal Manchester Children's Hospital and the access is available for all of their family. And if they've got classmates, for example, who would like to read a story, then again, they can have access to all those storybooks.

So that's something that we started, well, we started those conversations quite some time ago. But obviously the last couple of years with Covid presented quite a lot of challenges for hospitals, so it sort of fell onto the back burner a bit as they had such urgent priorities to deal with. But that now is starting to develop. I've been in and I've briefed all of the play team and I think they're quite excited about the potential , for connecting children both with their loved ones, but also how wonderful it is to be able to listen to a story.

Anyone who is based in the Manchester area and has children, or knows children who are in Manchester Children's Hospital , they're very welcome to get in touch with me directly or they should be able to ask the play team at the hospital and, and we can organise that for them and ensure that they have got access to the storybooks. And, they can share those with children who I think could very often really do with a story time.

[00:16:55] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Absolutely. And I think stories also fire the imagination. So this sounds really great.

How can interested people reach out to you or learn more? Where do they find you on social media?

[00:17:07] Caroline England: Our tag is @ Featherbed Tails on Twitter Facebook and Instagram. So you can find us on any of those. So, featherbed tales as in feathers and a featherbed that you lie in and be very comfy. We can also be contacted through our website, which is featherbed tales.com.

There are some contact us pages on there so people can send those through. I will be made aware of everything that that comes through, so if anyone wants to reach me directly, they can reach me that way. But I'm also on email caroline@featherbed tales.com.

[00:17:43] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thanks a lot Caroline, what advice would you have looking for people looking to start something similar in another part of the world or another part of the UK?

You talked about, reading being a challenge for 50% or lack of interest perhaps for 50% of children. So if more people get inspired by what you're talking about. How do they get started?

[00:18:06] Caroline England: It's quite challenging, that. I would suggest probably they get in contact, and we could have a chat about it.

I mean, I'm more than happy, to share thoughts about anything that we are working on. I think really, the lessons I would say are making sure that you've got some really nice, very attractive content and looking at where you might be able to engage people.

And one of the things that we're also looking at, is around that co-design and involving people in the design of content too. I think all of those things would be really important for people to consider.

[00:18:40] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you for sharing that and thank you for that offer to listeners who are interested to reach out as well.

[00:18:47] Caroline England: That's my pleasure.

[00:18:48] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: An opportunity now for you to talk about anything I haven't asked you about. You talked about the co-design and some of the other things coming up. Anything else you want to mention?

[00:18:59] Caroline England: I think that probably covers everything. I mean, we've got some really exciting projects and developments that we are looking at.

I'm always really interested in hearing from people who just might have some thoughts, some ideas, or work in an organisation. You know, for example, I've been in contact with a couple of organisations in Manchester who work with refugees. Obviously, people who are displaced but may have family in other parts of the world, that could be really wonderful.

We are also looking at doing translations. So if there's anyone who has a particular interest in you know, helping us to create some translations, particularly if it's for some communities that are displaced. I have a particular desire to do something with Afghanistan because, well, partly because I visited Pakistan in my early twenties and went over the Kyber Pass towards Afghanistan, and it really was a very magical experience. And it affected me quite deeply.

And to see the impact of the erosion of women and children's rights in Afghanistan and the total withdrawal, it is pretty much a total withdrawal, now from the education system absolutely horrifies me for the women and children, but also for the future of the country.

So if, you know, if there's anyone out there who's got some connections and feels that there's anything that we can offer, we'd be really delighted to have a look at that as part of our community social responsibility.

[00:20:32] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you.

[00:20:33] Caroline England: Thank you.

[00:20:34] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I'll now ask you my signature questions that I'll ask all my guests. Can you describe the Mancunian spirit in a word or a phrase?

[00:20:42] Caroline England: I would say that Mancunian are indomitable. They are very hard to repress, they are very resilient. I think brave and outspoken, and really have a very strong sense of Manchester as a city of doing things for Manchester and for the wider Northwest, but for Manchester in particular, and that pride in the area, I think is a very powerful thing and a positive thing.

[00:21:12] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Absolutely. And I think I see that definitely from my guests and from the people I interact with here.

Can you share a Mancunian who inspires you and why?

[00:21:24] Caroline England: I think I would pick the Gallagher brothers, so that's Liam and Noel Gallagher from Oasis. For me, I think they very much represent that Mancunian spirit.

I'm not sure how well we would get on personally, but I do think that they have had a huge impact for the visibility of Manchester, for pride that people feel in being a Mancunian. They're very down to earth. They're very outspoken, and their music has touched the lives of millions of people around the world.

And in addition to that, they have inspired very many songwriters and individuals to pursue a creative direction. I think for me, they engender that spirit of Manchester and also of the impact of music and the importance of music in giving Manchester bit of its soul back, post the Industrial Revolution.

[00:22:25] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you so much for sharing that, they do sound very fascinating. I have heard Oasis, but I wasn't familiar with the two brothers, so that's good to know and I will look them up. Excellent.

What's the most important life lesson you've learned so far?

[00:22:43] Caroline England: I think for me it's always about, being willing to learn and to self-reflect and to look at what we've done, how we could do it better, how we could have an impact in a different way or a more positive way.

My concern, I think, about our society at the moment is that people are very critical of other people. There's a lot of vitriol, there's a lot of hatred that people express through social media and it's really damaging. And I think it's time that we all took a step back and looked at ourselves and think about how we can have a positive role in the world, either at small local scale or on a much wider scale.

[00:23:29] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Absolutely. And I think this is one that the Meet the Mancunian tries to do as well. Spread a little inspiration, a little bit of good news, and to motivate more people to follow their passions and dreams and social impacts. So thank you so much for sharing that, Caroline.

[00:23:46] Caroline England: That's my pleasure. And I think Deepa, that's one of the things I love about the sort of thing that you are doing because it's about helping to get those stories out, the messages out of people who may have been afraid of taking a step into the unknown, but actually, they haven't looked back and regretted that, yes, they might have learned things along the way, but I think that is so important as part of inspiring other people.

I mean, I'm very long in the tooth now you know, and it's taken me till I'm in my fifties, to do something. But, it's never too late. And I think that the podcast that you do, can really help people, to feel inspired and just look at the world and see that there is perhaps something new and different or that they love that they can go and follow.

[00:24:32] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you so much, and I think it's really what you said. It's not about age, it's about that right place, right time. And has to be right for the person. Maybe, some years ago the podcast wouldn't have been right for me and, maybe Featherbed Tales wasn't right for you. We had to bring all our life experiences to this moment.

[00:24:50] Caroline England: Definitely.

[00:24:51] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: If you could have one superpower, what would it be?

[00:24:55] Caroline England: I think it would be to fly. Both because it would be a magical thing to be able to do, to go up in the world. I have a particular passion for birds, and I think it would be wonderful to, soar on the winds and to go wherever you want it.

But I think also, it gives a different sense of perspective. When you are up in the air, looking down upon the world, you realise how small you are as an individual, both in the world, but also in the wider universe. And I think that's really useful for us because, it's very easy to think the world revolves around us as individuals and it doesn't, and I think to sort of gain that perspective, to see what impact we have on the land around us at a very small scale.

But that can be over a much wider scale and to think about, what we do in the world and how we do it, I think is something that would be very valuable for all of us.

[00:25:52] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: It's a lovely idea and I love the idea of gaining a bird's eye view of our very wonderful world, but also, like you said, beset with many problems.

So yes, it's really good. And also the power of reflection. Taking the time to learn, reflect, and think about what you could do differently the next time around. And those opportunities do come around. Yes, absolutely.

Thanks so much, Caroline. It's been a real pleasure to talk to you today and learn a little bit more about all the impact you're making through Featherbed Tales.

[00:26:29] Caroline England: Thank you, Deepa, for having me, and I wish you ever success with your fabulous series.

Outro

Caroline, Thank you for talking to me and my listeners. I really enjoyed learning about helping children connect with absent loved ones today.

Dear listener, thank you for listening to the eleventh episode of season five of the Meet the Mancunian Podcast, social impact stories from Manchester.

I hope you enjoyed it. And it motivates you to follow your own dreams and passions. Please do consider visiting the website, www.meetthemancunian.co.uk to leave me some feedback or suggestions on what causes resonated with you or ones that you would like to see featured here. I really welcome listener feedback and will do my best to incorporate your suggestions in future episodes.

Next week in the season finale, the Meet the Mancunian podcast talks to Hannah Cox about helping purpose-led businesses thrive. Tune in on Tuesday, 4 July 2023 to hear the next episode.

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