August Activities with Archives+

Summer Reading Challenge (SRC) events

Supporting library staff in Manchester Libraries, Archives+ delivered 9 events to promote the Summer Reading Challenge during the summer holidays. At each of these family events, children and young people were encouraged to explore their love of reading by sharing their favourite stories, writing and filming book reviews, and creating short stories. Families came together to enjoy free film screenings, supplemented with craft activities tied into each of the film’s themes. Manchester Youth Council were on hand to promote membership to the Youth Council and members enjoyed joining in with the activities. Feedback from parents and carers was very positive…”I’m really pleased my daughter has joined in with the other children, she is usually very quiet and doesn’t mix.” “My daughter really enjoyed herself whilst her brother read lots of books.” “Fantastic event, staff very friendly and kids loved it!”

In total 683 children and young people plus 277 adults attended the sessions.

Teen Twitter Take Over Day

We had a spectacular crewe of digital journalists for the day from Manchester Youth Council and the young volunteers from Archives+. With iPads and mics at the ready, the young people captured the true essence of Manchester Libraries and Archives+ as they tweeted throughout the day.

Archives+ Roadshow

Taking the archives out to the community libraries is one of our main priorities and during the summer we visited Miles Platting Library in North Manchester. Exchanging stories, memories and photographs of local images with residents from the neighbourhood plays an important role in retaining those valuable histories.

Volunteers

We welcomed a total of 20 new volunteers to Archives+ during the holidays, to join our team of digital journalists. Their contributions will help to promote and share the archives collections via blogs, social media posts and community projects. Working closely with our partners in Archives+, the volunteers enjoyed a reminiscence workshop with Jenni from the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre, gaining valuable tips and advice, which they will put into action at future heritage/story sharing sessions. The images below also show volunteers exploring the strong rooms, looking for hidden gems for blog sessions held each Tuesday and Wednesday evening.

Some of the young Archives+ volunteers were keenly interested in taking on the challenge of going out onto the streets of Manchester to bring images from the past to life in the present day. They searched through a large number of images to select their favourite landmarks in the city centre and working as a team, by holding each image in situ where it was originally taken, the new photographs showed the comparison of past and present Manchester. The young people very much enjoyed this and found it very exciting, suggesting that they repeat this again in other areas of Manchester. Watch this space! “I love doing this, it’s so much fun!”

Working in partnership with Headstart (The Challenge) 14 of our volunteers signed up to the three short volunteer projects: Summer Reading Challenge (Reading Hack) events , Town Hall Photographers’ Collection digitisation and LGBT+ collection digital journalist. All the young people were enthusiastic and highly motivated ambassadors for Archives+.  Activities included assisting at “Read and Feed” events, SRC film screening events, Comic Con, digitising negatives to share on Flickr and writing blogs about the LGBT+ archive collection. The young people gained important transferable skills during their placement, which will help them in going forward into the workplace. The young people enjoyed their time in Archives+ so much, 7 have decided to stay on with Archives+ to continue their volunteer journey. This is what they had to say…“I gained confidence and speaking skills, as well as teamwork skills.” “It was a wonderful experience to work in the library and be around children.” “I got to learn new things and now know things about people in my community I didn’t know before.”

Read and Feed Sessions

Supporting Manchester Libraries and working with our colleagues from across the city council, we took activities out to the community libraries to the “Read and Feed” events in August, which in total had nearly 1600 child attendances. The “Read and Feed” initiative ensures that children don’t go hungry during the holidays and at the same time are encouraged to read and participate in creative activities.

Rainbow Playground

It was such a privilege to be involved in Rainbow Playground this summer.  In response to a request from young people for a youth focused LGBT+ celebratory event, The ProudTrust invited organisations, including Manchester Libraries and Archives+, to come together to assist them in planning and delivering a full, action packed day of  activities. We took digital equipment and a selection of archives from the LGBT+ collections to assist young people in recording their thoughts, feelings and stories on the day. See the full blog and video here

Festival of Manchester

The Archives+ team joined the community library staff at Platt Fields on a bright and sunny Saturday for the first ever Festival of Manchester. Libraries had an amazing craft stand creating beautiful hats and the staff from the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre were making bees. Archives+ made our amazing winged bee badges, which proved to be very popular with the grown ups! The craft tent was buzzing and the atmosphere was great around all the festival space. We can’t wait until next year!