World Earth Day

Here at the Arts in Libraries Team we have an aim to supplement our activities whenever we can through the investment principles we work to, as part of our funding through Arts Council England. These investment principles are a blueprint to guide our work and one section is around our environmental commitments.

This coming year we will be doing a lot more in this area, together with our colleagues in the library service and to kick this off we are celebrating World Earth Day which is an annual global event on April 22^nd to demonstrate support for environmental protection.

On this day, there is a whole range of pro-Earth events happening across libraries - to bring people together to mark the day, to think, to share our love of, and concern for, the planet.

On World Earth Day, in Haydock Library, Kevin Dyer led a creative thinking and writing session. The group looked at some of the earliest 'Nature' writing (Wordsworth's daffodil poem) and considered how such writing has grown, because of the climate crisis, into eco-poetry. (We looked at the splendid ' Sanctuary' by Camille T Dungy - the story of an elephant that has trodden on a land-mine). The thought provoking poetry can be read here

The group then wrote their own special pieces for World Earth Day - some dark and pessimistic, and some hopeful that we can save the place we are breaking.

To end with, we wrote tiny acts of rebellion, bits of guerrilla writing that we will drop into other people's shopping bags or slip into their pockets when they are not looking. Maybe, when they find them later, they'll spare a minute to not only lose themselves in a beautiful piece of nature writing, but also to remember this planet that keeps us alive.

We will be posting some photographs of this session later, but in the meantime you can see environmental principles that we will be working to this year here - St Helens Art in Libraries 2024 Environmental Plan Board Version V1 (PDF, 177 KB) and when it's been fully signed off you'll see our action plan as well.  

 .