Here is Fiona from Brompton Library, showing us how to make a shadow painting using things from around the house. Over to Fiona… Continue reading “Make a Shadow Painting”
Tag: art
Christmas art and craft activities galore at Chelsea Library
Heavy snowfall in December led to scores of schools closing across the country, bringing Christmas holidays closer for some happy children. Snowy and icy conditions caused widespread travel disruption. Nevertheless, if you were lucky to be on Primrose Hill or in Hyde Park, while it was snowing, you probably had a wonderful time!
Our Christmas art and craft activities at Chelsea Library skilfully avoided snowy showers, plummeting temperatures and icy winds and offered a great fun to children and adults. We created Christmas decorations – baubles, wreaths, lolly stick decorations and paper-plate angels. In fact, we have two more sessions before Christmas – more info here.
Our guest from Belgrade, Ana Milovanovic, faced bigger problems than a few inches of snow and wasn’t able to be with us to run her Azbuka Puppets’ Workshop.
So, we created another activity – ‘Let it snow’. Snowflakes in numerous designs, shapes and sizes and named in a variety of languages generated quite a joyful snowstorm for our display. In two hours we had representatives of English, French, German, Serbian, Macedonian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Greek, Spanish and Portuguese speakers. When at 4.20pm a bunch of new people arrived, they could not understand why we all cheered when I discovered that they were from Malta! Snow – or borra – is not a frequent occurrence in Malta, but it made a fantastic contribution to our display!
Naturally, whoever comes to Chelsea Children’s Library, has been asked to give their own input and make their language-snowflake. So, it continues to snow at Chelsea Library!
Christian, Marion and Zvezdana, Chelsea Library
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Kensington Central Library – October 2013
Hello to you all from the staff at Kensington Central Library! Autumn seems to have started but don’t worry – we have plenty of events happening that’ll keep you out of the wind and rain…..
Events past and coming up
Scary masks!
On Saturday 21 September, some scary monsters appeared in Kensington Central Children’s Library, the scariest was the Gruffalo himself! Everyone gathered round for the story of a little mouse who plays a big trick on his fellow animals. Then we made masks to disguise ourselves as all the different animals. There were lots of animal noises to be heard for a while afterwards!
We are now holding a story and craft session every Saturday in the children’s library at 2pm, until 3pm. Come and join us, for more creative fun!
Gemma Baker
Senior Customer Services Assistant
Author events
John McHugo
Sophie Parkin
Lucinda Hawksley
We’re extremley to lucky to have some great authors speaking at Kensington Central LIbrary this month –
John McHugo talks about his latest book, Sophie Parkin explores bohemian Soho, and Lucinda Hawksley marches with the Suffragettes.
John McHugo will be appearing this evening Tuesday 15 October, 6.30 to 8pm, Sophie Parkin will be here on Thursday 17 October, 6.30 to 8pm and Lucinda Hawksley on Tuesday 29 October, 6.30 to 8pm. Tickets will be available on the door.
Full details of these events are on the library events page.
Social media help
Like to learn more about Facebook and Twitter? We’ve a free training session at Kensington Central Reference Library on Friday 25 October, 10am to 12 noon. Places are limited so book your place soon at the library.
Half term fun!
Half term in the Royal Borough is week commencing Monday 28 October and we’ve plenty of events to keep your kids of all ages busy.
They’ll be a Halloween story and craft session on Wednesday 30 October, 2 to 3pm for four to ten year olds.
Also we two Persian themed workshops – Persian dance on Tuesday 29 October, 2 to 4pm for eight to fourteen year olds and Persian art on Thursday 31 October, 2 to 4pm for five to eleven year olds. Both these events are part of the Nour Festival of Arts and can be booked on www.nourfestival.eventbrite.co.uk
New displays
We’ve some new book displays this month that have been put together by our creative staff – pop in and take a look!
Black History Month display
Graphic novels on display
We’ve displays for:
- Black History Month
- Man Booker Prize
- Graphic novels – a selection of our collection
Hope to see you at our events this month!
Jodie Green
Lending Librarian
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Leighton House Museum Schools Art Competition
Leighton House Museum Schools Art Competition and Exhibition 2013 comes to Kensington Central Library
This week is Leighton House Museum’s 14th annual Schools Art Competition and Exhibition. It celebrates work produced within schools in the Royal Borough and aims to encourage children and young people to pursue their interests and talents in art.
Leighton House was the former home and work studio of the leading Victorian, Frederic Leighton. Frederic Leighton was visited by many great artists in his day, and as President of the Royal Academy Leighton gained a reputation for encouraging the work of young and emerging artists.
This year 33 schools took part in the competition and over 11 pieces of art work were selected for the exhibition at Leighton House Museum which took place earlier this month. The exhibition has now come to Kensington Central Library for one week and displays the prize winners.
The exhibition and competition is sponsored by the Park Gallery, Flow Gallery and the Friends of Leighton House Museum.
Jennifer Kirk
Culture Service Development Officer
Further information
More information about Frederic Leighton and Leighton House Museum can be found on the Leighton House Museum webpage.
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The Chelsea Blog – May 2013
Welcome to the May blog post from Chelsea Library. Lots of exciting things have been happening in the reference library at Chelsea so over to the staff to tell us more….
Adult Learners’ Week 2013
In Chelsea Reference Library last week we got involved in Adult Learners’ Week by teaching some classes about getting more out of online information. From finding online career advice that you can trust to using our online Berg Fashion Library, we have really enjoyed hearing about our student’s different interests and helping them to do more online! (To access the Berg Fashion Library you’ll need a Kensington and Chelsea library membership).
We will be running more classes soon, so if you are interested, check out what we will be teaching next on the library events page.
And speaking of the fashion library, having been to the cinema recently we were inspired to display some of our books on 1920’s fashion that are in our Costume Collection.
Great facts about Chelsea Reference Library
#2: The Chelsea Gallery
Did you know Chelsea Reference Library has space to display art?
The Chelsea Gallery, which is ideally located on the Kings Road in the heart of Chelsea, is a perfect place to hold art exhibitions. The gallery has been showing a wide range of exhibitions of some fine artwork by artists based inside and outside the UK for over twenty years. To date, we have had talented artists from around the world, including the USA, Philippines, Turkey, Japan, Iran and more, showcasing their paintings, sculptures and other artwork in the gallery receiving much attention and praise from the public.
Our gallery space is beautifully presented, spacious and can be hired at an affordable rate. Whether you happen to be an amateur artist or an accomplished professional, the Chelsea Gallery is a great place to showcase your artwork.
To find our more about the gallery visit the Chelsea Gallery page on our website and the gallery is on Facebook too.
The Chelsea Reference Library Staff
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Brian Sewell at Kensington Central Library
Brian Sewell – one of Britain’s greatest living critics and possibly one of the most controversial – came to Kensington Central Library on Thursday 21 February 2013. He was interviewed by Michael Volpe, Opera Holland Park’s General Manager. It was a fantastic evening and in case you missed it don’t worry as the interview was filmed. Over to Michael Volpe to tell us more….
Brian Sewell in conversation with Michael Volpe
In these short films, we present highlights of an evening in conversation between Brian Sewell, art critic and author and myself. I have known Brian for over twenty years, dealing with him both as art critic and as an author for our in-house publications at Opera Holland Park. I never doubted Brian’s ability to engage an audience – he has made a career of that – but the evening revealed a deeper and more nuanced personality that the public rarely see.
The films present a clear-eyed Sewellian view of the arts world at large, the Arts Council, museums, the education system and a plethora of other subjects. He is never shy of giving his views and as one might expect, expresses them beautifully (and with an acute comic timing too!). Sewell is revealed as a passionate advocate for art and art history, possessing a fierce commitment to connoisseurship and a deep reluctance to have any truck whatsoever with cultural vacuity.
The discussion lasted nearly two hours with questions; we present a selection of threads from the evening and in total the films last approximately 45 minutes.
Michael Volpe
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