Tuesday 16 April 2013

Goodbye from NALD (The National Association for Literature Development)

The National Association for Literature Development (NALD) has disbanded after twenty years of active work on behalf of readers, writers and literature development workers.

Starting its life as the National Association of Literature Development Workers, the organisation has seen governments, arts councils, policies, strategies, fashions and fads come and go. At its heart, however, the belief that reading and writing could change lives, and that those who worked with readers and writers could benefit by sharing knowledge and resources, remains unshaken.

The current Board of Directors believes just as passionately that talent, access, opportunity, excellence, diversity and plurality are crucial values for those working in the literature sector. However, the means to promote, secure and advance these values have changed and continue to change, and NALD is no longer the best way of servicing the sector and the people working in it.

We received hundreds of applications from you to put our remaining funds to good use in the sector and we're very excited about the eight projects we have chosen for the NALD Futures Fund, which will together make up the NALD legacy. Among the projects, there's reader development, talent encouragement, research, new partnerships and the creation of new work. Details can be found here.

We would like to thank all those many, many people who have been active in NALD’s work over the past two decades. There are too many to name individually here but the Board’s particular thanks go to Steve Dearden for his two crucial stints as Director in the course of the company’s history.

The National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE) will be broadening their remit to include more literature development opportunities. You can follow them on Twitter here, sign up to the weekly bulletin here, and contact Wes Brown w.brown@nawe.co.uk to share your news for the sector.

We hope that the networks, enthusiasm, professional development opportunities and passion for what we do that NALD championed for so long continues to be felt by the coming generation of literature development workers.

Source: Press release

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