Empathy Festival 2025
This month Manchester Libraries spread the message about the power of “jumping into someone else’s story” by taking part in Empathy Lab’s 10 day nationwide Empathy Day Festival.
1056 children in total across Manchester attended school visits, online author sessions, empathy-themed storytimes, craft activities and more – all aimed at inspiring children to learn about empathy, develop key empathy skills and put them into action.
To kick off the celebrations, Central Library held Empathy crafts and activities linked to Empathy Lab’s Read for Empathy Collection.
Broad Oak Primary School said:
“…the links with refugee week really helped the older children to think about the experiences of others.”
“The KS1 children loved making their puppets and could talk in detail about the emotions that they had chosen to represent.”
780 Manchester primary school students virtually attended an author session with Rashmi Sirdeshpande, author of We’ve Got This!: Six Steps to Build your Empathy Superpower. Rashmi explained what empathy is and why it’s so important – helping build understanding so that pupils could engage more with other empathy-themed activities.
On Empathy Day itself, we took award-winning author Catherine Bruton to two primary schools. Year 5 and 6 pupils heard how Catherine’s experiences teaching refugee children inspired her books Bird Boy (featured in the 2025 Read for Empathy Collection) and No Ballet Shoes in Syria. Pupils learnt the power of seeing the world through other people’s eyes – decorating Empathy Glasses to activate their empathy superpower.
We welcomed the Anne Frank Trust which empowers young people to challenge all forms of prejudice through workshops around antisemitism and gender equality. Our work involved two schools and included two impactful sessions. The sessions focused on understanding and addressing antisemitism, and the topic of gender equality and how we can promote fairness and inclusion.
Several libraries also held craft events, including Hulme High Street, Arcadia and Moss Side Powerhouse and all our library storytimes were themed around Empathy, using Smriti Hall’s story ‘Best of All.’ Libraries also created displays of books showcasing books promoting empathy, understanding and kindness.
