Ballinasloe Library and Europe Direct Centre Summer Reading and Arts Project

The Summer Reading and Arts project runs parallel with Ballinasloe Library and Europe Direct Centre's normal Summer Reading Club. The AIMS of this project are;

• To encourage an awareness and appreciation of Europe and European issues through exploring stories from different countries and cultures.
• To encourage an appreciation and interest in books and reading.
• To encourage tolerance and acceptance of difference.
• To have FUN!!
• To learn new creative skills
• To encourage personal and group development.

Participants/Numbers :Young people aged 7-11 yrs

Book Reading - Open Attendance
Wednesday Workshops - Max 15 per group.Booking is recommended

• Book Reading -Tuesday,12th July-11.30am-12.30pm
• Workshop 1 - Wednesday 3rd August-11.30-1pm
• Workshop 2 - Wednesday 10th August-11.30-1pm
• Workshop 3 - Wednesday,17th August-11.30-1pm

Programme Synopsis;

The Book Read session will introduce the theme of Tales of Europe and will include songs, movement, stories and folk tales from different European traditions/cultures.Wednesday workshops will introduce 2 stories in greater depth.The group will explore where the story comes from, the writer,original written language and relevant cultural traditions.Participants will be given the opportunity to design and create their own book cover relating to the stories using assorted papers,pens,collage materials etc. The designs will be exhibited in the library with information about the original text.

Writers will include Astrid Lindgren- Sweden, The Brothers Grimm- Germany,Hans Christian Anderson-Denmark, Tove Jansson- Finland, Alf Proysen-Norway as well as more traditional folk tales from Europe.

Social Inclusion Awareness Week 2011 - Deadline 15th July

Click on the image above to enlarge

Creativity and the Library

The Galway Ensemble in Residence, The Con Tempo String Quartet, performed this week in Portumna, Ballinasloe and Gort Libraries.

They provided the kind of experience for the public which Thomas Rehak, the Chief Librarian of the Municipal Library in Prague, referred to when he spoke at the MetLib Conference in New York last week.

Tomas Rehak said:

"The Public Library must be a place where people want to be. They must be beautiful places...living spaces...places where people can meet"

• We should support creativity
• We should inspire creativity
• We should promote creativity
• We should facilitate creativity

Libraries supporting those who want to understand the World and themselves

Contempo Quartet in Gort Library

Come hear the Galway Ensemble in Residence, ConTempo Quartet on June 15th in Gort Library @ 8:00 p.m.
Free Admission to all Concerts, and early arrival is advised.

The Galway Ensemble-in-Residence selected ConTempo Quartet to be the heart of a music development programme for Galway City and County. Based in NUI Galway, ConTempo began their residency in January 2003.

The residency is designed to bring a love of music to new people and new venues, and to enhance the experience of those already involved in music.

The Secret of Kells: Tuam Library

The Secret of Kells:

As part of the ‘One Book, One Tuam’ project, Midie Corcoran from Earwig Arts Festival, worked with Tuam schools to create a Giant Book of Kells, filled with stories of Finn McCoole and Irish legends.
The giant book is 6 foot in height and 4 foot in width and is on display in the children’s area.

3 Rivers Storytelling Festival

• Suzanne Hogan is a native Australian now settled in Athlone.She trained at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts and has worked in theatres internationally. She investigates via performance how people understand their culture and society through stories, play and dance.She has enjoyed a year long residency in Athlone’s Dean Crowe Theatre as well as several Director- in-Schools programmes as part of Westmeath County Councils Arts initiative. She has done several community projects for the Percent for Arts Scheme working with international choreographers Jeannine Maguire-Lowry and Rionach Ni Neill.

• Liz Weir has worked with all age groups for over thirty years promoting the traditional art for which Ireland is world famous. A children’s librarian by training, she now travels the world telling stories to adults and children, organising workshops on storytelling, and speaking at courses for parents, teachers and librarians. She was the first winner of the International Storybridge Award for “exemplary work in promoting storytelling between Ireland and other countries”. She is the director of the Ulster Storytelling Festival and has been a featured teller at major festivals in Ireland, England, Scotland and in the U.S.

• Danielle Allison comes from an educational background. She has worked with children in schools, libraries and festivals all over Ireland. Danielle tells a wide range of stories, which often involve audience participation. She is a founder member of The Dublin Yarnspinners .Now settled in Athlone, she is committed to bringing the t

raditional Artform of storytelling to the Midlands and is Director of the Three Rivers Storytelling Festival.

• Simone Schummelfeder grew up in the small German town of Beverungen Weserbergland. Her father inspired in her a love of stories early on. At university she learned the power of storytelling as a teaching tool. In 2006 she spent the summer studying with renowned Irish teller Liz Weir. She and her

sister are the authors of a book for children titled Ruprecht Storchschnabel -die Abenteuer des zu vorletzt Geborenen der Elfen (Rupert Stork-beak – The Adventures of the Last of the Last-born of the elves).

• Liz Warren, a fourth-generation Arizonan, is the direcotor of the South Mountain Community College Storytelling Institute in Phoenix, Arizona. She has performed nationally and in Ireland and England. Representing SMCC, she is the producer of the annual Mesa Storytelling Festival in Mesa, Arizona. Her new textbook, The Oral Tradition Today: An Introduction to the Art of Storytelling was published in 2008. Every summer she comes to Ireland to teach “The Irish Storytelling Tradition” as part of Mesa Community College’s Study Abroad Ireland Program.

• Aideen McBride often used storytelling in her at Primary School in Ballymun, Dublin,Now a full time storyteller She has told her stories at the National Museum in Dublin, Cultra Folk Museum in Belfast and at many, many

summer festivals. Her stories, sad and funny by turns, include yarns and folktales handed down to her by her father in Carlow. She loves to include her audience in the stories, many of which have a participatory element. Audiences of all ages will enjoy the spell Aideen weaves with her imaginative and warm delivery of these stories from the Irish tradition.