Every year, Belsize Community Library brings hundreds of people together. Our most popular activities are Rhyme Times for families (in four different languages!) but it's much more than that: craft sessions, language classes, reading clubs. Whether we deliver it ourselves or make the space available to others, we make sure it's available as a sort of mini civic centre for our community.
To keep it open, people get stuck in. Volunteers staff it during library opening hours, companies send teams in to decorate and clean up, our team at The Winch applies for funding and local people make donations. This page is about that last part: our fundraising target for this financial year is £10,000. If we can raise that amount we'll be able to brighten up the space, maintain our Rhyme Times and add a craft and cooking session every week.
Of course, if we smash the target then we can do something even more exciting, like extend our library opening hours! Now that, would be magical.
What we'll deliver:
- Maintain Rhyme Time sessions (did we mention they're in four different languages?)
- Add a cooking session for children!
- Add a craft session for children!
- Brighten up the space by repainting the walls and cleaning windows and floors
- Spruce up the furniture with new rugs and sofas
Why it's a great idea:
Libraries are threatening closure across the country, yet they're one of the few civic spaces that remain open to everyone and provide somewhere for anyone to go, regardless of background. In Belsize, our library is also somewhere that parents come with their children, students comes to study, older people come to read and of course local people come to volunteer. What's not to like?
Steps to get it done:
- Continue supporting the fantastic volunteers who run our Rhyme Times
- Invest in nice new furniture, or source it second-hand if we can
- Bring in a team to repaint and clean the walls and floor
- Resource and buy materials to run a regular cooking session
- Resource and buy materials to run a regular craft session
