From Story Time to System Change: How Reading Can Power the Empathy Movement 
Speaker: Imogen Bond   (15 min) 

To Video, Summary, AI, Outline, Full Transcripts 

Summary

https://otter.ai/u/m-muungXrrdhHnfYjJ36vgBjcjk?view=summary

Imogen Bond, Managing Director of Empathy Labs, discussed how stories can foster empathy and improve social and emotional development. She shared a story by Katya Balen, emphasizing the emotional connection readers form with characters. Bond highlighted research from the University of Sussex, showing that empathy and reading ability grow together, enhancing reading enjoyment and overall well-being. She stressed the importance of diverse, inclusive books and interactive discussions about characters' feelings. Empathy Labs' programs, including the Read for Empathy collection, aim to create empathy-educated generations through storytelling and reflection.

Action Items

• [ ] Post/contact details and resources (website links and materials) in the chat and share on screen so attendees can access empathy lab resources and contact information

• [ ] Publish the Read for Empathy collection annually, with the next collection released in February (issue 65 titles for ages 3–16 as described)

Outline

Introduction of Imogen Bond and Story Time Initiation

• Speaker 1 introduces Imogen Bond, Managing Director of Empathy Labs, highlighting her role in promoting empathy through stories.

• Imogen Bond begins by wishing everyone a happy new year and invites them to participate in a storytelling session.

• She asks participants to share their thoughts on the characters' feelings as they listen to the story.

• The story "Together" by Katya Balen is introduced, specifically written for Empathy Lab, and participants are encouraged to engage with the story.

Reading of the Story "Together"

• The story revolves around a 12-year-old girl and her 7-year-old brother Max, who is singing as they drive to get a new dog.

• Max points at cars, and the girl translates number plates into words using her codes, which Max sometimes repeats.

• They arrive at the house where Max gets tangled in his seat belt, and his singing becomes frantic.

• They meet Elvie, a gray puppy, and despite the puppies' playful nip, Max comforts his sister by rubbing her hand and offering his spinner.

Empathy Lab's Mission and Approach

• Imogen shares her screen to discuss Empathy Lab's mission to grow an empathy-educated generation through reading.

• She explains that their approach is evidence-led, focusing on improving well-being and social and emotional development through stories.

• Stories are described as empathy engines, helping individuals understand others and themselves better.

• Research from the US and the UK shows that reading can measurably enhance our ability to connect with others.

Research and National Year of Reading

• Imogen mentions recent research with the University of Sussex, showing a virtuous circle where empathy and reading ability grow together.

• She highlights the declining levels of reading enjoyment globally, including in the UK, leading to a national year of reading in 2026.

• Reading enjoyment is linked to future happiness and success, predicting measures like earning potential, mental health, and ability to work well with others.

• Neuroscience shows that stories activate emotional centers in the brain, leading to hormonal responses and visceral experiences.

Empathy Through Stories and Programs

• Imogen explains how Empathy Lab uses stories to foster empathy by encouraging participants to feel with characters, reflect on their feelings, and take action.

• She outlines the three elements of empathy: feeling, thinking, and taking action, and how stories help achieve these.

• Recommendations for fostering empathy through stories include diverse and inclusive books, reading aloud, and discussing characters' feelings.

• Empathy Lab offers various programs, including the Read for Empathy collection, which highlights empathy-rich books for different age groups.

Conclusion and Call to Action

• Imogen concludes by encouraging participants to connect with Empathy Lab's resources and programs available on their website.

• Speaker 1 thanks Imogen for her presentation and emphasizes the importance of teaching children to build empathy.

• The session ends with a reminder for participants to connect with the resources shared in the chat.

• Tony Scruggs is introduced as the next speaker, signaling the end of Imogen Bond's presentation.

Transcript Preview

Speaker 1  0:00  

And now I get to introduce Imogen bond, Managing Director of empathy labs at UK for not for profit, which activates, develops and celebrates the power of stories to build real life empathy, passionate advocates for Special Equity and creating conditions to raise thriving generations within a connected community, and Imogen will be talking on from Story Time to system change. How reading can power the empathy movement. Take it away.

Speaker 2  0:32  

Hello, everyone. Very nice to be here. Hope you're all well and happy new year, because at empathy lab, we are all about how stories can build empathy. I'm going to start with story time. So I invite you to sit back, relax, listen carefully, enjoy this story with me, and maybe as you're going through the story, if you can, you might want to put into the chat some of the ways you think the characters feel as you are hearing about them. You don't have to. You can just enjoy it if you want to, but if you would like to do that, feel free to jot into the chat how you think characters are feeling. And there is no right or wrong answer in this. So tell me what you're thinking as you go along. 

So this story is called together by Katya Balen. She's a YA writer. She wrote October, October. You might know that one, but this is a short story from her which was written especially for empathy lab. And you can find a lot of these on our website, in our resources. So here we go. I am 12, and Max is seven, and he is singing. There are no words, but there is a tune that sounds like birdsong or an orchestra or whispered secrets. He runs his fingers along the car window, and he spins his spinner, and he points at the blue cars and the red cars, but not the yellow cars, because they're not his favorite today, I turn the number plates into words with my codes, and I tell Max the words with my hands and with my mouth, and sometimes he says them back, but mostly His hands are too busy pointing at endless Cars. Max's favorite word is his first word, and today it's coming true, because we're getting a dog, a gray puppy with a shaggy wolfy coat and big paws. And I am so excited I can't keep still, and I fidget and fiddle until Dad says, I'll wear out my bones and fall apart. 

We arrive at the house, and Max tries to get out of the car too quickly, and he's a tangle of seat belt and car seat, and boy, his singing gets lower and more frantic, and I think we might be in trouble. So I point with one hand and I say dog with the other, and he sees Elvie in the front garden, and everything is going to be okay. Janice opens the gate, and 1000 dogs bark, and Max curls his fingers into his ears, but he's watching and waiting, and his elbows are flapping like a bird. Elvie rushes to the front in a scribble of wiry wool fur and pink tongue, and Max sings again.

 I scratch Elvis ears, and then I stroke the other puppies because they're swirling around my feet a bit like hairy sharks. And then they're exactly like furry sharks, because Quick as a flash, one nips my hand with bright white teeth, and I shout. And Max looks up. There are two perfect red dots on my hand, and I blink, and Janice says, I'm so sorry. He's only playing he hasn't learned yet. And I know, I know, I know, and it's silly and it's just a shock, but before I can say a single word, Max is there, and he's rubbing my hand with his, and he's holding out his very best spinner to me, and I take it in the car on the way home, Elvie sits between us in her brand new blue harness that Max and I chose together, and she pants and yawns, And so Max and I stroke her scruffy fur until she falls asleep, and tomorrow we'll take her for her first walk together. So I hope you enjoyed that story. I am just going to share my screen for a moment and we can have a think about what that story is doing. So let me just go from here. Hopefully you can see that. So as I said, I'm from empathy lab. Our mission is to grow an empathy educated generation.

 Many. Empathy educator generations, and we want every child to benefit from a really powerful reading based empathy education. So our approach is evidence led, and it really concentrates on improving young people's well being, the individual's well being and social and emotional development through the use of stories, but we also then use that to strengthen their relationships for more cohesive communities. So ultimately, that ends up with lots of generations making the world better for everyone. Empathy is the root of that we believe, and we concentrate on reading because stories are a really brilliant training ground for understanding other people. Infant evidence tells us, and the Neuroscience tells us that stories are one of the very best ways that we have to develop our empathy, and that's because books are like empathy engines. So hopefully, as you were listening to that story, you were seeing through the eyes of the character. You were thinking their thoughts, you were feeling their feelings. You were exploring what it's like to be in their world. You're looking through their eyes and standing in their shoes, and that helps you understand somebody that you might never meet in real life, or understand somebody even that's very similar to you, and start to understand yourself better because of that, but

Speaker 2  6:24  

there's been lots of research, particularly in the US, and now more research happening over in the UK as well about the way in which reading and empathy are intertwined. So it's not just that reading is reading fiction is an enjoyable thing to do, but that actually it can measurably enhance our ability to connect with each other. So reading can be a very powerful thing. And we just in November, released some research that we had jointly done with the University of Sussex in the UK, and we found that actually it's not just that empathy is built through reading, but that there's a virtuous circle that happens when you use an empathy focused approach to reading and start to think about the character's thoughts and feelings as you're concentrating on the story. It's not just that the empathy is built, but that in turn, makes for stronger readers. So empathy and reading ability grow together over time, and that matters, because you might know there's been vastly declining levels of reading enjoyment pretty much across the world. 

So it's happened so much in the UK that our government has now decided that we're having a national year of reading to try to address this. So 2026 is our national Year of Reading, but actually that loss of reading enjoyment is replicated around the rest of the world as well. So reading can be this very powerful way of connecting with others, but if we do that, the stronger we become as readers, then of course, the more we read, and we keep going round in this virtuous circle. And there is evidence to show that reading enjoyment is the single factor that determines our future happiness and success. So across everything in terms of our ability to earn, earn a living, our ability to work well with others, our ability to have good mental health, all of those measures of well being and success reading really enjoying reading is the thing that is able to predict them all. We need our kids to be able to read and to enjoy it and to choose to do it. And this is why. 

So the Neuroscience tells us that what's happening in your brain when you're listening to a story or reading a story is very different to what's happening when you are hearing or reading factual information. So the brain on the right is what's happening in your store. In your brain when you're listening to a story, your brain gets fired up in all sorts of ways that it doesn't if it's just simply trying to decode language and comprehension of language, what's happening is that your emotional centers, all of your emotive parts of your brain, are starting to fire up. And that doesn't just light up those areas of your brain, it also prompts a hormonal response as well. You have a visceral, bodily response to stories, which sometimes you'll notice and sometimes you won't. So if you've ever read something spooky in the hairs on the back of your neck, custard on end, or if you've ever laughed out loud at something, or if you've really missed the characters when you close the book, or cried when somebody has died within a story, that's that hormonal response happening. 

You're having a bodily response, and that's a very powerful thing. Your body, your brain, doesn't really understand the difference between fact and fiction, how it experiences something in real. Life and how it experiences it through really rich, richly narrated fiction is is very, very similar. So our brains respond in this way to stories, and we can harness that power, and that's what we do at empathy lab. We turn this in its simplest form, into this very simple way of working. So we read, we feel with the characters as we read, which is what I was asking you to do when you were listening to that story. Then we might have a walk around those characters. We reflect on them, we ask ourselves questions about how they're feeling. We discuss them, we share their points of view. We might think about all the different points of view. That's if you're working with a class of students that might come to bear. Some people might have personal experiences of a character like Max in the story. 

They might have personal experience of being that big sister in the in that story, or they might not, and so they might want to bring different experiences to it. And then once we've had that thinking exploration and understood the different points of view that we turn that into action. So we are always thinking about, what can we do to spark this into action? Rather than leaving it at that reflective period, we want to really make change through stories. If you know anything about empathy, you know that there are three elements of empathy, and so that way of working reflects that those three different elements, the feeling part that time, when you emote, the kind of affective part of empathy, where you feel something along with the character. And then there's the thinking part, the cognitive part, where you start to kind of walk around and understand them and take their perspective. And then that a moment where you take action, where you're spurred to do something. 

Those are the three parts of empathy. So really, we're just using that and attaching it to the way that stories work. And there are a number of things that we can do to really make sure that when we're using stories, we are doing our very best to include that kind of empathy focus in the work that we do. And these are the things that we recommend, which are put into the way that schools work, the way that homes, that things that happen at home, with the way that libraries and bookshops work, anywhere where children and stories come together, these are the kinds of tools that we want to be happening. So we want diverse, inclusive books. We want to make sure that books aren't banned and that Representative books are available to young people. We want them to be read aloud and for book talk to happen. So it's not just about the reading, it's about the way that the conversation develops after that. So not answering questions about the book, but thinking aloud, wondering together about the story. 

There needs to be a real focus on character. I asked you, how did the character feel? Not how do you feel? So we want to really think about how the characters are feeling, and we want to keep our discussion within the safety of the story. So you might want to bring your personal perspective to it, but you don't have to. And of course, we want to try to immerse children in the story, whether that's the creative activity, through art, through drama, or simply through eating the food that the characters are eating, smelling the smells that they're eating, going for a walk and discussing the story through the place that they have been in the characters themselves. And we've turned this way working into a number of different programs which you can access. Some of them are free to access everything happens digitally, so you can take part anywhere across the world. First of all, there's our read for empathy collection. So this will come out in February every year from the previous year, we pick 65 of what we think of the best kind of empathy rich books for three to 16 year olds and so

Speaker 1  14:05  

this is amazing. I'm so sorry to stop you. We are are at time, and I need to move on to no worries. The links are in the chat. Please connect. I aggressively agree that teaching children is the best way to build this empathy moment. Know better. Do better, teach better, so we can be better. Thank you exactly so much for the work that you are doing.

Speaker 2  14:25  

That's okay. I'm just going to put this up. If anyone wants to contact me, you're more than welcome. Look on our website. You'll find everything in there.

Speaker 1  14:32  

Thank you so much. And if you could close the share screen and it's in the chat, so connect, connect, connect. It is my pleasure to bring on Tony Scruggs on.