It’s been a busy few weeks here in Lochend Library.

We had a visit from the wonderful Neil Slorance who inspired our S2 class to create their own comic characters. This was part of our EAL Reading Group Project which was supported by the Scottish Government School Library Improvement Fund.

We are celebrating Black History Month with our displays of non-fiction and fiction. Come and check them out.

The LGBTQI+ safe space is taking place in the library at lunchtime on Fridays. Pop along if you fancy a chat in a welcoming space 🙂

And finally, a big thanks to our senior barista students, Nadine and Aiden, for the two free iced lattes. Delicious!

Photos below:

A massive thanks to Michael Lee Richardson for his amazing LGBTQI+ Pride workshop with a group of our brilliant S2 pupils. They had such a great time working on blackout poems, creating a collaborative poem and discussing a range of topics from The Gorbals Vampire to storylining for Hollyoaks. Poem and pics below!

All Colours, All Pride – a group poem

Pride smells nice, like lavender
pillow spray that makes you sleep.
Pride is calming,
a mix of blue and red.

Pride is dyed lilac hair.

Pride is violets,
and sunflowers,
roses
and dandelions,
Pride is daisies.

Pride is yellow blonde hair.

Pride is blood and rage and danger
and balloons.
Pride is blush
and nail polish
and lipstick
and eyeshadow
and jasper.

Pride is a red pen.

Pride is a blue sea ocean,
calm and relaxed.
Pride is a clear blue sky.

Pride is sad and upset.

Pride is the blue stripes in the trans flag.

Pride is blue stars and seagulls,
Pride is the police,
Pride is drowning and depressed.

Pride is cold and winter.

Pride is orange, like Garfield.
Pride is a Minion.
Pride is confusion.

Pride is the colour of fruits, vegetables,
drinks.

Pride is all around,
Wherever you are.

We had a brilliant, thought-provoking Wee Write session with Tamsin Winter. Some interesting themes were discussed and some mesmerised faces in the audience :-).

Copies  of Tamsin’s books are available in the school library and also in community libraries.

To celebrate our S3 writers’ achievement in writing and publishing a novel in five days, we held a signing event on World Book Day. Teachers, friends and parents were invited and cakes were provided! 🙂 Many thanks again to Yvonne and Dan at White Water Writers for providing our young people with this opportunity.

https://whitewaterwriters.com/

Our LGBT Pupil Champions Group helped the library to celebrate LGBT History Month in February. They participated in choosing books to buy in, helped to create a display and used the library for discussions and to prepare for their presentations for assemblies. We are well on our way on the path to our silver award!

Our LGBT+ Pupil Group did a wonderful job of helping to select some new LGBT+ books to add to our collection. Super excited to use them on our LGBT History Month display in February. Of course, a perk of the job is to get first dibs on the books :-).