Longsight Library held their annual Fun Palace at the beginning of October. We had lots of fantastic activities brought to us by local partners and artists much to the joy of Longsight families.
Poet, Ruth Awolola, ran a fantastic Black History Month creative writing session with families based on the poems of black poets such as Alice Walker and Audre Lorde and using a theme of Dreams.
Anamika Cultural Group made lovely hedgehogs and Manchester Museum brought their Hedgehog, alongside a stoat to the afternoon for people to view. We had a lovely moment when a youngster took her handmade hedgehog over to meet the Museum’s hedgehog.
Longsight Community art space brought their fantastic clown, Bilal, to the proceedings. Their was a lot of fun to be had with him.
Artist Emma Martin from Building the Bridges brought out everyone’s creativity with her Crazy Cup activity.
The pride in place team launched the fantastic outdoor repurposed game benches. We had such a fantastic Sunny afternoon for it! You can pop into the library and borrow the games pieces and stools to play.
Chinese Culture CIC brought along flasks of Green Tea and Chinese Chess boards and gave a lovely dragon performance!
Olympias Music Foundation in partnership with the library and Manchester Museum ran their 4th musical Story session. Saxophone tutor Jamie accompanied our library manager Roma for a story about recycling, Christophers Bicycle. Keeping in the vein of reading we had the pleasure of the Book Drs who were prescribing good reads for all, it is the National Year of Reading…after all!.
Dare to be Different took over one of our glass meeting rooms to create a SEN space for people to join and have a bit of a quieter, chilled focussed time with Lego & bracelet making. Rehena and her team were on hand to share information about their support and information group for parents of Special Educational Needs children.
We were blessed with not just one Calligrapher but 3!! Our muched loved Dragon’s Voice who taught folks Chinese Calligraphy and new to us… but watch this space, as we’d love to have Sareh from We Restart Art Centre of Sanctuary back teaching us more Persian Calligraphy.
And last but not least we had crafts with both Afrocats and our lovely member of staff Cristina. Watch out for sessions with Afrocats as they deliver Manchester Libraries new upcoming project A Winter of Creativity across some of libraries in their extended opening hrs.
As ever a big THANK YOU to all our lovely activity providers who turn up and deliver a fantastic afternoon of fun for our lovely local community.