Dave Eggers won the 2008 TED Prize for his education and literacy work with kids, and in this entertaining acceptance speech he provides a brief history of his project. He’s the founder of the unbelievably successful Once Upon A School program which offers free drop-in tutoring centres for kids. The centres are entirely staffed by volunteers who tend to be writers (including Eggers), professors, grad students and self-employed professionals—all people who tend to have irregular, flexible schedules.

Quite apart from the genius of the overarching idea, Eggers also intuitively understands how to design the sort of place that actually makes kids and teenagers choose to drop in for one-on-one tutoring after school. The spaces are wildly imaginative and hilarious without talking down to kids or looking overly childish. They must appeal to adults as well, because they are all multipurpose centres that also include adult office space. At 826 Valencia in San Francisco, Eggers’ publishing concern McSweeney’s Quarterly operates out of the back, there’s a functioning “Pirate Supply Store” in the front, and the kids’ tutoring area is in between.

 There’s nothing about this project that isn’t just total genius. Below is the facade of 826  Valencia, decorated with a mural by graphic novelist Chris Ware depicting the history of language, speech, writing and publishing. Exterior photo by David Hilowitz; sandwich board photo by Dan Rochman.It is hard to get some children inside a library – but a high-street shop selling pirate eye patches or superhero equipment is much more of a draw.This is the simple principle behind a literacy movement that has taken hold in America, and is coming to Britain.

The novelist and screenwriter Dave Eggers, best known for his 2000 bestseller A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and his publishing house McSweeney’s, has set up a series of enticing drop-in centres in cities across the US to promote writing and reading among children. Now a British team of writers and arts entrepreneurs is to create a version in London, with the backing of Eggers and initial funding from Arts Council England.The first children’s centre to try his radical approach was established in 2002, in Eggers’s native San Francisco. Named after its address in the Mission district of the city and guilefully hidden behind a Pirate Supply Store shopfront, «826 Valencia» helps students aged from eight to 18 to develop writing skills in informal workshops. By seducing young patrons with pirate parrots and peg legs, it removed the stigma associated with extra literacy lessons.

The San Francisco store was followed by a Superhero Supply Store in Brooklyn, New York, which sells capes and tins of «anti-matter». Seattle then took up the challenge, setting up the Greenwood Space Travel Supply Company. The growing network of individual projects is linked through the Once Upon a School website.Writers behind the London project are to pilot a similar venture in an unused shop for six months, and are seeking a suitable space and further funding. As in America, the store will be largely staffed by volunteers. Eggers recently attended an open meeting in London and called for public support. Ben Payne, one of the British organising team, was inspired: «He did a call to action that brought together a passionate and excited group of volunteers after the show, all buzzing about how we could make an 826 London centre.» The novelist’s instruction to «follow the weird» is crucial, Payne believes, and he is now looking for an unusual shopfront for the store. Plans for a London centre started in earnest this February, but other writers and community workers have also been keen to copy Eggers’s idea.

 A project called First Story has already sent well-known authors such as Zadie Smith into schools. Writer Kate Waldegrave, who co-founded First Story, said she believed there is a better tradition of «educational charitable enterprise» in America. «That’s a bit of a shame about England, but I think it is changing.»