WILD IMAGININGS
LIBRARY AT THE HEART OF FESTIVITIES AS DUNEDIN CELEBRATES CHILDREN’S LITERATURE
WILD Imaginings Hui for Children’s Writers and Illustrators and Ignition Children’s Book Festival, November 2019.
In late 2018, Trish Brooking (children’s literature lecturer at the University of Otago College of Education, forwarded me an email from Storylines representatives asking whether Dunedin would be interested in hosting a hui for children’s writers and illustrators, ideally in the following year, 2019.
The email came just as Dunedin Public Libraries (DPL), in partnership with the University Bookshop (UBS), were about to host the first Ignition Children’s Book Festival, organised by a small committee led by Kay Mercer, DPL’S Events Coordinator and Phillippa Duffy, General Manager of UBS. This festival continues the impetus of the popular Storylines Family Day which was held at DPL. The Dunedin City Library is at the heart of Ignition, offering more than a venue for the festival. It also facilitates connections between writers, illustrators and their readers, indubitably expanding their readership; and between children, their teachers, and families and library staff and collections, extending knowledge and use of the DPL’S services and collections.
It was clear that a separate group of volunteers would be required to organise a national hui for established and aspiring children’s writers and illustrators. Trish and I contacted local children’s writers and illustrators, a number of whom volunteered to be involved with planning, and so WILD Imaginings was born. We decided early on that the hui would need to run concurrently with Ignition 2019 to help reduce some of the costs; the hui committee worked closely with Ignition to bring five presenters to Dunedin, to share three venues, and to schedule many events so that interested adults could attend both the festival and the hui.
WILD Imaginings could not have run without the support of local institutions. DPL was the first to offer support and a base for hui activities, it also provided a meeting room for hui planning. Four other venues nearby, St Paul’s Cathedral crypt, the Athenaeum Library, the Octagon Club and the Public Art Gallery were used for breakout sessions, keynotes and a marketplace for publishers and booksellers. DPL management were also supportive of my involvement in the hui which was a voluntary role but invariably intersected with my job.
Twenty-two different presenters, including 11 local and 11 national children’s and YA writers, illustrators, publishers and editors, spoke at the hui which began Friday, November 8, 2019. A choice of tours, including DPL’S Reed Collection, the Hocken Library, and a literary walking tour, were followed by a mihi whakatau from local iwi and a mayoral welcome to hui delegates at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery. Over the course of the weekend there were six keynote sessions, and three break-out sessions, which included fourteen workshops (with one stream dedicated to illustration).
The hui sessions offered practical skills and advice on a range of topics including contracts; reviewing; the ups and downs of publishing, writing, illustration; social media; book design; and writing for the classroom. Topics also covered different genres: junior fiction, young fiction series, creative nonfiction, film scripts, picture books, and fantasy. At the Saturday evening dinner at the University Staff Club, delegates heard from past fellows of the Dunedin children’s writing residency and were encouraged to apply in the future.
WILD Imaginings brought together over 80 writers, illustrators, publishers and editors to learn from each other. Along with Ignition there was quite a buzz in the city about children’s books. The city library was at the centre of it.
For many the end of the year means Christmas, barbeques, time with family, and stepping away from work to retreat to the beach. For public libraries this season means one thing – summer reading is coming.
Last year, Nelson Public Libraries staff challenged ourselves to have a summer reading programme for everyone in the community and we were pretty happy with how this went. In addition to our Children’s Summer Reading Programme, we launched a young adult version and an all ages ‘Biblio Bingo Bonanza.’ These had some great feedback, but nothing is perfect and my colleague Laura Findlay and I declared to the library world the next Nelson Summer Reading Challenge would be better than ever.
We wanted to make this year about connections. Connections between the programmes and connections with our community. So armed with their feedback and all the ideas we got organised.
This time around we got together with a group of staff and met up in late August for a half-day planning session. It might seem obvious to do this, but up until now we had been individually planning three summer reading programmes. I can’t recommend doing this enough as it was a chance to bounce ideas back and forth, make a list of everything that needed to be done and assign roles and dates.
SO WHAT DID WE CHANGE?
There was a theme… kind of. The Children’s Summer Reading Challenge asked participants to follow a map of South America, which lead to a lot of important pun brainstorming and the name ‘Al-paca My Bags.’ This worked with the Around the World Young Adult challenge which asked teens to read a book written by an author from every continent. For the bingo card we dropped some of the digital challenges (after feedback that it was too tech-heavy) in favour for challenges asking people to read a book set in Africa/asia/europe and so on.
There was a logo and overall programme name, which we also had translated into te reo. This created consistency as we included the logo on all the materials and had one poster advertising everything to cut down on poster overload.
A big change was running the signup through Survey Monkey. This was a bit of work to set up (snaps to the colleague who did this!) but it was so worth it. Staff simply had to open up the survey, select the challenge and fill in the participants details. It also means a lot of statistical analysis was done for us, which is always a good thing.
We had events! This year we are offered drop-in Reader’s Advisory and Shared Reading Sessions to tie-in with bingo challenges. More importantly, we will end the programme on February 14th with author talks and live music at the library during the day and will draw the bingo winners, before an after-school party where those who finished Alpaca My Bags will be given a certificate.
BUT WAS IT THE BEST SUMMER READING PROGRAMME EVER? WE THINK IT WAS CLOSE.
Even when you think every base has been covered, every lesson from last year has been built on, there is always something to learn. We still had some confusion about how each challenge worked but that’s always going to happen when you’re doing three things at once. We also ran out of bingo and young adult cards pretty quickly which is a good problem to have, but did mean we sent some stressful last minute orders to the printers the day before they closed for Christmas.
The success of these signups means we are shifting our focus from getting maps and cards in people’s hands to getting them completed and returned. It’s still early days, but we haven’t had too many bingo cards back and expect about 1/3 of children to make it to the end of the programme. The YA group, however, are crushing it as most cards are already returned will positive feedback written on.
Connection is still part of the plan next year. But maybe we need to look beyond the initial connection we make with our challenge participants and think about how to continue it throughout the summer months.
Rosamund Feeney; has worked in both academic and public libraries for four years and is currently the Community Programmes Coordinator at Nelson Public Libraries. She loves being part of the library profession because no two days are the same but each one has the opportunity for us to make a significant impact on an individual’s life.