Bag Books is a UK-wide educational charity which works to help develop communication skills in children and adults with the most severe and profound learning disabilities. It is the only organisation in the world publishing multi-sensory books specifically for this group of people.
The Pixel Fund is subsidising the annual production of one of their most popular titles “Band Rehearsal.” A Bag Books story is no ordinary book; it is unbound, its pages are A3 card and it comes in a box containing an array of objects to feel and move; things to smell and sounds to activate. Each sensory object is used by the participant, hand-over-hand with a storyteller, in a sequence carefully devised to tempt the interest and hold the attention. They develop motor skills, encourage communication and foster turn-taking. Each copy of “Band Rehearsal” is handmade in the Bag Books craft workshop and takes around five hours to construct with volunteers contributing around a third of the total labour.
Staff in the majority of adult day centres around the UK have been trained to use Bag Books and they are also used in over 97% of all the UK’s special schools catering for pupils with severe or profound & multiple learning disabilities. 86% of teachers in those schools said they used Bag Books at least weekly, including 36% who used them daily. They also judged that 98% of the children in their classes had benefitted from using Bag Books stories. In total, Bag Books multi-sensory stories reach an estimated 25,000 children and adults with severe learning disabilities each year.
“Band Rehearsal” tells that tale of the Multi-Tones pop group who are in the studio recording their next single. They stay up all night perfecting it but how will their fans react when they perform it live for the first time?
On behalf of Bag Books
