Marcus Rashford has become a figurehead of British football, bagged an MBE for his campaign on child food poverty and is a leading voice in anti-racism. His next mission? To get underprivileged children reading.
Last year, the 24-year-old founded the Marcus Rashford Book Club with Macmillan Children’s Books to donate good reads to UK schools, improve library facilities and help with teacher training. The aim is to develop disadvantaged children’s literacy skills and help broaden horizons.
“[Reading] allows a means of escape,” Rashford tells the Standard. “Children in underserved communities need that escape more than most, but it’s those children who don’t have the immediate access to books that they need. Whether that be down to school budgets or lack of contingency budget at home to purchase books, we had to get the right books in the hands of those children.”
In 2021, The National Literacy Trust found 6 per cent (or 413,068) of the UK’s children and young people did not have a book of their own at home, and the Manchester United star plans to change it.
Today, Rashford celebrates the scheme and the power of childhood creativity with a new zine and mural alongside Burberry and The Face magazine. “Burberry and I launched the library project in October alongside the National Literacy Trust and Macmillan Children’s Books, with the hope of inspiring children to see their potential,” he says of the partnership that initially saw the luxury brand fund 10 schools across Manchester, Yorkshire and London.
Burberry and The Face have built on this, hosting workshops in North London’s Holmleigh Primary School, where kids from years three to six sketched their fantasy future. Among them, budding doctors, drummers, artists, FBI agents, pathologists and pirates all got took pen to pad.
Artist Tegen Williams has transformed the works into a collage that stands over 10 feet tall as a mural on the school’s local Tottenham High Road. Fashion photographer Campbell Addy has also taken portraits which see the kids’ doodled ambitions actualised, with splashes of Burberry’s nova check, for a 1,000 print run of the new zine, ‘dreamscapes’.
“This is just a natural next step, highlighting children’s creativity and allowing them to see what’s possible beyond their front doorstep,” Rashford says.
The England forward, who has also turned his hand to writing children’s books including last year’s bestselling children’s non-fiction, ‘You Are a Champion’, has seen first-hand the benefits reading can bring.
“Seeing them open up their minds to how they view the world, and where they see their position in it has been amazing,” says Rashford. “I had a little girl at Button Lane in Wythenshawe, Manchester, ask me why I wanted to get books to children like her. I was taken aback by the question. Taken aback by why she didn’t feel deserving of it. Many of these children have never had much to call their own and that is one of the driving forces.”
Rashford’s own upbringing has motivated his activism and spurs him on to lift economically disadvantaged or socially sidelined youth. “I didn’t read until I was 17 for two reasons. One, I couldn’t see myself in any of the characters and two, my life wasn’t a fairy-tale and I wasn’t particularly interested in reading about them,” he says.
“With the Marcus Rashford Book Club, my team and Macmillan Children’s Books place a heavy focus on representation. Every child should pick up these books and believe they were written for them,” he says. Selections have so far included ‘A Dinosaur Ate My Sister’ by Pooja Puri and ‘Silas and the Marvellous Misfits’ by Tom Percival. Future picks will continue to be inclusive towards race, gender, sexuality and religion.
“I just needed to find the right type of book to engage me, ones that equipped me with resilience and strengthened mentality,” Rashford says. “What I have got out of books since I started to read has helped me navigate this high profile job. Particularly the ups and downs.”
