David Cope

I was looking for something worthwhile to do and it was surprisingly hard to find anything meaningful. So I decided to go back to the area I was brought up in. We lived in a council house on Forge Lane, 4 doors down from St Richard’s school. I contacted Lauren McCarthy (Head of St Richard’s) in September 2024 to understand if I could help and we discussed a number of things the school was trying to do.

Having been lucky enough to send my children to private school the thing that really hit me was how much the school struggled to fund what many of us would probably consider the basics. With classroom numbers dropping in many areas and with funding calculated per pupil many schools struggle with funding the basic running costs.

One of St Richard’s dreams was building a library and we decided this would be a good place to start. We opened the library in April 2025 with 3500 books and a beautiful room. It struck me that building a library in a primary school in an area of book poverty might be the or at least one of the best returns on investment there is. For the cost of 1 year’s private school fees we have been able to give 200 children access to books. Not only access but books they can take home and read with their parents. The library also acts as a peaceful safe space for children that aren’t always lucky enough to take that for granted. And of course the library is there for all the children who pass through the school in future years. That’s why we make sure that we are involved after the initial go live to make sure the library continues to develop.

Having learnt so much from the first project I decided to set up a charity and do this in an as many schools as possible.

Did you know?

1 in 7 state primary schools in the UK do not have a library. This rises to 1 in 4 schools in the most disadvantaged communities. “The National Literacy Trust”

Frank Cottrell-Boyce - Children’s Laureate

“Children who have not been given the vast invisible privilege of being read to will all too soon be parents themselves and, without support, will pass on that disadvantage to their children”