Happy Pride month to everyone!
To celebrate, this month’s post will be about how the school LGBT+ club and the library have worked together to create a more inclusive space.
The first step was looking at a very inclusive library (and one of Ms Spaltro’s favourite): the Glasgow Women Library. In October Ms McMillan, the librarian and the LGBT+ club visited the GWL guided by the archivist, Nicola Maksymuik and one of the volunteers, May. We saw unique material and art works; but also discussed equality and respect. Very actual, isn’t it? A new hobby was also discovered: badge making! So loved by everyone that Ms McMillan bought a badge maker for our school as well.
This event – and a Glasgow school librarians training – has encouraged us to fill our library with rainbow flags labels. After a library assistants meeting, it was decided to stick a rainbow flag on the spine of every LGBT+ friendly book in the library, to help every reader to find books with LGBT+ themes. It took months to be ready, but the success was immediate. A handful of pupils from the LGBT+ club became our book reviewers: they have been in charge of reading the new books and identifying if they were LGBT+ friendly and suggesting them to the other pupils. Some titles? Giant Days by John Allison, Heartstopper by Alice Oseman and The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta.
February is the LGBT+ history month and has meant for our assistant lots of debates while they have prepared an amazing book display with a rainbow flag donated by the drama department. Not to forget the brilliant badges and informative material that the Creative Industries class has produced and distributed across the school.
The cherry on the top of the cake has been the brilliant event with Dean Atta thanks to the Wee Write! festival. Meanwhile the library team was working on a more inclusive space; Mr Beaton’s S2 class took part in Words that burn project (check the previous post) and Dean Atta was one of the authors involved. The librarian was so impressed that when the opportunity came up, Ms Spaltro wanted the pupils to meet him. Our LGBT+ readers made sure that every pupil who was going to take part in the event had read the Black Flamingo and prior to the event we chatted about the book for weeks. After having listened to the author’s presentation, we discussed coming out, families, integration and Drag Queens. It has been absolutely stunning to see the pupils so engaged and informed. So proud of them and thanks a lot to the Wee Write! Festival team and of course Dean Atta for inspiring us all.
What’s next?
Keep having these bookish conversations that encourage events and activities, keep hosting inspiring authors and support every library user to feel confident and welcome in the library. Last but not least, we are working hard to achieve a bronze LGBT+ chart for our school!
For the events pictures, please check our twitter account: @KsSchoolLibrary
