Wigan Words Festival 2011
The Wigan Words Festival 2011 was the most successful ever, in terms of audiences, with the main events being a talk by Prof. Germaine Greer on Shakespeare's Women and a talk by three rugby pundits and writers. Our libraries hosted and organised a number of the festival events: Mark Olly made a welcome return to talk about the Knights Templar; the ever popular June Francis talked about her life and writing and we screened the 1947 film of Brighton Rock, accompanied by an interesting talk by Prof. Neil Sinyard (an expert on Graham Greene) which everyone agreed served to enhance the experience.
(Photo: Family Fun Day flyer)
We are continuing to roll out our Libraries, Heritage and Arts family-friendly branding, fronted by a little tree frog called Hal. The official launch of the Hal brand commenced with a Family Fun Day at the Turnpike Centre, Leigh on Saturday 7th May, which became the final event of the Words Festival. The Library Children's Team and the Turnpike Gallery worked with local primary schools prior to the event, asking children to write a story or poem about what they liked most about Leigh. We used a standard template to collect these, which the children also decorated in any way they chose. Over 1200 children took part, and their work was collected together into the 'Longest Story Book that Leigh has Ever Seen!'
(Photo: Postcard)
We are also trying a new approach by introducing postcards, to be distributed to children on class visits to libraries, the Gallery and the Museum, to take home with them. The cards raise awareness of other cultural venues and includes an invitation for parent/carers to take the child back to visit again. All the promotional material signposts families to the Hal microsite where they can read Hal's blog, find out about events and download a calendar weekly/monthly to display on their Hal fridge magnet! The microsite is a Wordpress blog, that sits outside our server and therefore was acceptable to our IT department. It is regularly updated and, whilst hits are still relatively low, they have increased measurably since the official launch.
Visit the Hal microsite:
Our focus will now turn to the Turnpike Centre's 40th Anniversary in November, with a series of 70s themed events, leading to a week of celebrations and, of course, the opening of the new Wigan Library in January 2012, for which we are hoping to organise a varied programme of activities and some high-profile author events.
Librarians in the North West have pioneered partnership working to encourage new readers into libraries. Time To Read is a partnership of librarians engaged in reader development activity in public library authorities in the North West Region. All 23 public library authorities in the region currently support Time To Read.