Leonie Rutherford on the Teen Reading research project, and grants…

How do good ideas win grant funding?

Did you ever wonder how good research ideas end up as funded grants? The story of the Cultural Pathways to Reading Linkage gives one answer. Most Linkage Grants build on established relationships with industry and government partners nurtured over several years.

The Teen Reading program of research started more than a decade ago, with a meeting between Leonie Rutherford and one of the professionals then leading the State Library of Victoria’s Centre for Youth Literature, young adult author, Dr Lili Wilkinson. We thought that libraries as sites for young adult literature and readers – and as social media hubs – were a great way to explore how teens interact with young adult literature and library intermediaries. We wanted to collaborate with the Centre to further its own goals (a bit of the history is here) of knowing more about young readers and solving problems of engagement with YA literature and literacy.

In 2015 we worked with the Centre to scope the stages necessary to get funding, based on their real-world problems and Deakin researchers’ specialist skills in children’s literature and audience research. The following year we won some funding from Deakin and the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund – our ongoing partner – to scope relevant research and get some pilot data about how diverse teens use digital platforms for reading.

A surprising finding from our pilot survey was that the major reason that all types of Australian teens give for not reading more is the difficulty of finding a good book. We knew from our library, school library and book industry partners that discovering good reads was key to promoting Australian YA literature and also to library professionals in giving adolescents great reading recommendations.

Hence our great research idea was born – how do young Australians find out about all the great books they might want to read for pleasure? After spending most of 2018 writing our grant, we learned of our success in July 2019. Then we had to find our team of researchers, our partners in a pitch to the Australian Research Council, and we were ready to start…