I am writing to you as you were all customers of
Book and Kitchen and I wanted to share some news.
It has now been just over a year since I closed the doors to Book and Kitchenwith a heavy heart. It was sad to become one more statistic in the story of bookshops closing and small businesses failing as they are unable to compete with the online offerings and discounts.
Closing a business in some ways is much more difficult and costly that setting up a business, and I had the difficulty of several other personal challenges to face in the process.
The good news is, that I am finally getting back on my feet again and hopefully will be able to contact many of you who have become friends over the coming months, and also settle many outstanding issues with the closing of the shop that I simply was unable to do before.
The good news is….
I am now managing a wonderful new London wide project that hopefully will have an impact on reading and books far more than my small bookshop could have imagined.
The London’s BIG READ 2019 is a city wide campaign that aims to bring Londoners together through reading books that expand our understand of our community and express the diversity of this great city.
The theme this year is Female Empowerment and we will be running a year long campaign across the city, our transport networks and outreach programmes across London universities and schools to support The Children’s Literacy Charity that does incredible work setting up Literacy Labs across disadvantaged schools and areas of London and Manchester. This is a growing problem and its estimated that by 2025 around 1.5 million children in the UK will reach 11 unable to read resulting in lower life chances.
I will be writing to you more in the coming weeks about the activity plan for this and how you can get involved and our list of events for this.
Best wishes,
Muna
LONDON’S BIG READ 2019 FINALIST ANNOUNCEMENT PARTY TONIGHT
I am happy to be able to offer a very small number of FREE tickets to Book and Kitchen Customers for our launch party of the campaign that will be held tonight 27 November at 6pm at the LIBRARY private members club in Covent Garden. If you are interested in attending please RSVP at the link below. The shortlist includes an incredible line up of authors of fiction, non fiction and children books who will be in attendance today.
