News from library authorities:
BLACKPOOL
National Year of Reading activities featured heavily in all Blackpool libraries during the summer. These started with a month long Dr Who extravaganza, with a special Dr Who day at Central Library in July. This saw children and their parents taking part in many Dr Who related activities. The Dr Who exhibition centre in Blackpool supported the whole promotion by lending us mannequins of different characters, a Dalek and a Cyberman. They also contributed prizes for the best costume on the day.
Following this, we returned to the NYR theme for August "Read the Game" With the Summer Reading Challenge proving extremely popular this year, we decided to encourage more young people and parents to take part by holding a sports day in the library. We hired a pool table and a tabletop football game that were placed in the main lending library. Working in partnership with the leisure team, we organised sessions of indoor golf, bowls, curling and football. The pool table and the football game proved very popular with people of all ages.
Local artist, Paul Pickford, also visited most of the Blackpool libraries and worked with families to produce some wonderful cartoon pictures of sporting heroes. His gentle and calm manner soon had the weakest artists creating their own masterpiece.
The adult and family learning team worked with us during the summer to support the NYR theme of the month. They held craft sessions in most of Blackpool's libraries and based their work around the Olympics. As well as making a collage at each session, families were encouraged to use books and computers to find out information about the Olympics and to reflect this in their craft work. The results of these sessions have been on display in the libraries and have been much admired.
September has seen us involved in the initial planning stages for a Primary School's Book Quiz. This will commence in November and finish in June 2009 and is intended to continue the message of NYR into next year.
September has also seen us finalising arrangements for "Wordpool 08"- our second celebration of words in Blackpool. This commences on 2 October and runs until 9th October and is a joint initiative between the libraries and arts services. The programme this year includes well-known names such as Kate Ellis and A.L. Kennedy and has a special family fun day on Sunday 5th October, featuring a 50 ft whale. This will be in Stanley Park and families are invited to enter the whale to hear a "Mariner's Tale". There will also be "side shows" by the arts service, adult and family learning team and the library service.
For further information contact: Jane Brooks on 01253 478 091
Time To Read currently has a full time paid co-ordinator, supported by Arts Coucil of England and Museums, Libraries and Archives, North West.