Library of the Month: The Forum Library Wythenshawe
We are excited to bring The Forum Library Wythenshawe as our February library of the month, Forum Library is situated in the Forum Centre, so right at the heart of the community, well placed to offer so much. It extends a warm welcome and lovely space for everyone and is a valuable and well-loved resource for Wythenshawe.
Not only do we provide an extensive range of books, but we also help people to help themselves, improve their opportunities, bring people together and provide support and guidance, we also love to celebrate and entertain our community.
We have computer access, free wi-fi, and offer extended hours with our Open+ system. Last year we were visited by nearly 140,000 people.
The Forum Library hosts several significant cultural events every year, these events are aimed at the community, they feature vibrant programs that highlight wellbeing, cultural diversity and creativity. These events include:
-International Mother Language Day in February -Festival of Libraries in June – Fun Palaces in October.
We host two Holiday Activity Fund sessions per week during all the major school holidays. These are aimed at Children aged 10-16. We provide a craft or sport activity with a hot lunch. Our main priority is to offer this to local children that would normally receive free school meals.
We have the national Sumer Reading Challenge every summer. This encourages children to read and get excited about books. The children get automatically entered to a draw to win prizes. We also offer weekly activities to keep the children engaged and encouraged to complete the challenge. Each school holiday we offer a weekly library led craft session, this is free and open to all ages. We have engaged with every primary school in Wythenshawe and most of them have been to the library for a class visits, author visits, illustrator sessions or theatre performances. We have also had several visits for sessions from our local high schools
We also regularly visit Ashgate Specialist Support School, where we use Bag Books to deliver sensory Storytime sessions to the classes. Every child can explore and interact with each page, as they are unbound, and each contain a different sensory experience.
An excellent example of partnership working is when the Wythenshawe Age Friendly network hosted an Ageing Well event at the Forum Concourse, it had lots of Information and activities for the over 50’s. The event was extremely successful with several 100 people attending. The library promoted all its Age Friendly services and offered hand massages in our Makerspace area from Manchester College students.
The library loves to get out and about, taking library services, information and activities into parts of the community that may struggle to get to us, one brilliant way we do this is with our Reading Friends group, and library room with a great collection of library books at Village 135. We have a wonderful working relationship with Village 135 that truly benefits all involved.
We are a busy library with lots going on, we host many regular sessions to fit all ages, needs and tastes, that includes:
-Storytime sessions every Tuesday for all our little borrowers.
-Multi-sensory Storytime sessions.
-We alternate children’s coloring club and Lego club every Saturday afternoon.
-Afro-Tots group come once a month, they provide a cultural session that includes crafts, singing, dancing, and sampling new foods.
-WHG host a SEND session every Monday for children/parents and carers offering support and advice.
The library hosts many regular advice sessions such as:
- Weekly face to face advice sessions with CAB.
- AA
- National Careers Service
- Anxiety Group
- Bereavement Group
- Shelter
- Be Smoke Free
We are an enjoyable space seeing the value in offering many recreational groups and clubs for our community such as:
- Age Friendly Hour
- Chess club
- Sewing group
- Crafting sessions
- Art club
- Knitting group
- Guitar Shed
- Reading Group -Poetry sessions
- U3A
- Ancestry Group
On the 12th of October we officially launched our New Creative Space, it was an excellent opportunity to showcase our performance space, interactive classroom, and podcast/music production studio to the people of Wythenshawe.
The Creative Space will be a community asset where groups who are charities, CIC’s, or non-profits will not be charged to use any of our spaces. We want to bring cultural opportunities to people’s doorsteps and harness and empower the creativity all around Wythenshawe. The Creative Space may be newly opened, but we already have so many amazing things going on, Wythenshawe Youth Theatre are up and running in the space with over 50 children attending, Music Evermore are running rock band sessions twice a week getting on average 20 students a week, to find out more please click here. and we are delighted to have Happy Somedays using our Podcast studio as well as The Fall hosting the ‘Oh Brother’ podcast.
We launched a community led cinema called BLOCK Cinema on the 16th of Jan, which went down a treat.
We hosted our first play called the ‘The Day Centre’ which was written and performed by the Community Media Crew. It was a roaring success with over 100 people in attendance.
For Self-Care week we ran a successful event with Mind over Matter and Mercury Sounds, PaintPots art group exhibited some of their artwork and Pioneer House which is a SEND school have been doing monthly class visits to use and enjoy the space. We also had an exhibition and workshops with two local high schools for Human Rights Day, all delivered by JFK Human Rights.
Read more about our New Creative Space at Manchester libraries blog.
Forum Library is a wonderful place, it has a warm and friendly environment and staff who are committed to helping. It is central for improving and enhancing the lives of its community, connecting people to information and education, as well as cultural and creative enrichment. The library always has loads going on, with an impressive program of events and activities, so pop-in say hello and have a look around, and don’t forget to pick up a copy of the monthly What’s On guide.
Have a look at our virtual tour and Website to explore more about Forum Library
