by Admin | 28 Jan 2021 | latest, reading
Fancy joining a book group, but not sure how to go about it? It’s difficult during the pandemic, to be sure. Well, look no further. We’ve done the leg work for you by starting one of our own at the library. In an ideal world, we’d be holding group meetings at the library, obviously, but during lockdown, that’s not possible. So, we’re inviting interested parties to sign up to an online book group for now, with the idea that we’ll transition to in-person meetings as soon as the pandemic allows.
We have four potentially interested readers already – why not think about joining them? There are no hard and fast rules about anything at the moment – when and how often you meet, how many members the group will have, how you will choose your reading materials – all that is yet to be decided by you, dear readers.
While borrowing books is difficult due to the pandemic, we’ve negotiated a discount for bulk purchases from local bookshops, so sourcing books once chosen should be a cinch.
For more information on how it could work, email cricklereaders@cricklewoodlibrary.org.uk.
by Admin | 17 Jan 2021 | events, latest, local
Councillors Lia Colacicco, Tariq Dar and Ahmad Shahzad are offering a public meeting to gather residents’ views on the recently instigated Low Traffic Neighbourhood Scheme. Keep an eye on social media tomorrow for details of how to join the meeting, scheduled for Monday 1 February.
by Admin | 9 Jan 2021 | latest
Something to look forward to. It’s what we all need right now, isn’t it?
Can you sing? Play an instrument? Recite a poem or a monologue? Juggle? Tell a (clean) joke? Perform a puppet show? We’re looking for talented people of all kinds to take part in an online talent show to take place at the end of January/early February.
We’d love you to be part of it, help us raise some cheer (and hopefully some funds) for the library and give the community something to look forward to through the dark days of January and beyond.
The Event
- Will take place on Zoom, early evening, from the end of January/early February, depending on everyone’s availability
- Each act will have 5 minutes to deliver their “party-piece”
- Each performer will need to have access to an internet-enabled device with a camera/microphone and be able to install Zoom on it (we can give some remote support on that if required). Mobile phones are fine, though a desktop/laptop gives a better Zooming experience
- Performers will need a quiet space to perform in, with a neutral backdrop – no dogs/kids/noisy flatmates barging through while you’re performing please!
- This is a family friendly event, so please ensure your material, surroundings and demeanour are appropriate!
- The audience will make a donation of their choosing to attend
- The audience will not be visible – only performers will appear on screen
- The library will provide a moderator to introduce acts and start/finish the evening
If you think you’d like to take part, please send a short (no more than 90 sec) sample video to Federica on events@cricklewoodlibrary.org.uk as soon as possible. She’ll be in touch when we’ve reviewed all contributions. Please be sure to indicate your availability when you get in touch with her.
If you’re too shy to perform, you can still take part – in the audience – and we’ll be posting more info about that in due course. In the meantime, follow us on social media for updates, and get practising!
DOWNLOAD AN EMAILABLE FLYER HERE TO SEND TO FAMILY AND FRIENDS
by Admin | 8 Jan 2021 | building works
The last post on here (before the latest lockdown) was about painting preparations. Well, painting work is well underway now, and in fact almost finished. The dust sheets are still up, but if you peer in you can just about make out what’s going on. Joe, Gerry and Alan, with help from other volunteers, have been beavering away in two-hour shifts, broken up by two-hour intervals. The intervals allow for airing the space out between volunteers. Because they’ve been working alone, it’s been a lonely task, but at least they’ve not spent their time chatting, eh? Gotta look on the bright side. Huge thanks to all of them.
Here’s what one volunteer (Joe Keating, pictured), said about why he volunteered.
“I volunteered for painting to support the important library project. It feels good to play a small part in this long-term voluntary effort. Those involved in the planning, fundraising and monitoring of the building process have given enormous amounts of time, work, expertise and persistence over several years. They deserve every assistance in completing the library for our community.”
Thanks also go to the generous donation of quality paint obtained for us by supporter Ellen Alsbrooks. This is truly a community effort and the library is very much a joint effort. It will be lovely to see all contributors in the library when we finally open later this year.
As well as the painting work, Alan is also now working on a solution to affix all of the shelves to the walls, and to build our movable shelving. Once this is completed, we’ll be able to restart book cataloguing, as far as Covid regulations permit. Once the stock is catalogued, it will be sorted and shelved. We’ll be making calls to the book stock team in due course for volunteers for these tasks.
Meanwhile, the background preparations are also ongoing. There are volunteer handbooks and policies to write, instruction manuals and training programmes to finalise, an intranet to be built, and many, many more tasks. So far this year we’ve clocked up an impressive 113 hours of volunteering time between us.
by Admin | 1 Dec 2020 | latest
If you’re passing the library this week you may well see us in and out getting ready for painting the library, sorting out materials, prepping the surfaces, that sort of thing. The painting task is about to begin. Sadly, it won’t be the big, sociable community event we had originally planned, due to that pesky Covid-19, but it has to be done! So we’ll be working in small groups, in a well-ventilated space, with changeover time between shifts to air it out.
Alan Carter, who’s running this activity, will shortly be in touch with volunteers via Three Rings. If you’re sad at missing out on this, don’t worry, there will be many more tasks to get stuck into.
