The Purley Festival ran for a second year, with many regular and special activities running in or from the library in Purley. Here are a selection of the events.
An opportunity to hear from a local milliner – Fascinating Hats by Valerie Mackenzie
Historical Walks
children’s activities
and art work on show….
Thanks to Wendy Ager for this report and images of the opening ceremony, held at Purley Library. We welcome receiving posts, comments and photos from anyone so please email them to soslibrary@hotmail.co.uk.
The speakers were Fiona Lipscombe, Purley Festival Director, who spoke about the community coming together and local business support, without which the festival would not be able to run as we don’t get any funding from anywhere.
The Deputy Croydon Mayor, Councillor Tony Harris, spoke about his memories of Purley from childhood to more recent times and had everyone laughing.
Also, Leanne from the Library spoke about the events at the library and finale weekend, and two artists who are exhibiting their work.
It was a thoroughly enjoyable event with standing room only at the back, and a guitarist played popular tunes afterwards whilst people mingled and had light refreshments, again donated by local people and businesses.
You can follow Purley Festival events:
on twitter at @PurleyFestival
on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/PurleyFestival
and on the website,which you can find at http://www.purleyfestival.co.uk/
| Purley Library |
Purley Festival runs from 25th June to 1st July and their Twitter account has tweeted about “special events” being run in Purley Library as part of the festival.
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| A regular weekly event promoted under the banner of Purley Festival. |
Seems this is, yet again, a case of Croydon residents taking the matter of promoting Croydon libraries into their own hands. Whilst we await details directly from Purley Festival organisers we sought out the details for ourselves, on the Croydon Council website.
Nothing listed under Events in Croydon Libraries
Nothing additional under the events listed in Purley Library tab, other than the regular activities on offer.
Nor is there anything out of the ordinary listed in the Events listings for the week of Purley Festival.
We look forward to receiving full details of the additional events and are keen to promote them as we regularly hear of residents struggling to find details of events in Croydon libraries as advertising is so poor and erratic.
But it will come as no surprise to many of us that Cllr Tim Pollard, newly appointed to the role for overseeing libraries, is quick to follow in the steps of his predecessor, Cllr Sara Bashford, in taking the credit for the work of residents promoting libraries and denying problems with the service on offer.
In the Croydon Guardian, online Cllr Pollard is quoted,
“The events at Purley Library during the festival week cater for all age groups with a range of interests and many encourage whole-family participation.
Some of the activities are regular events at the library, while others are one-offs, adding extra dimensions from music, fashion and craft as well as literature and discussions about China and Croydon- a measure of the diverse nature of what our libraries offer.”
Dare we remind Cllr Pollard of the events regularly cancelled in Sanderstead Library, the library in his own ward? The promised list of volunteers, he claimed were so keen to help, that never materialised for the Summer Booktrail, resulting in activities being cancelled, just one example.
Cllr Bashford was caught out by the Bookseller for the lack of any promotion of any events for National Libraries Day, which resulted in hard pushed staff cobbling together displays such as this at only a day’s notice.
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| UK Citizenship test or Highway code anyone? |
Let’s hope that a community pulling all the stops out, in their own time, to promote Purley and its facilities, including its library; a library who campaigners believe is still lucky enough to have a qualified librarian attending, unlike many other Croydon libraries, is supported by Cllr Pollard and Croydon Council.
We’ll post full details of all events in the library that week when we can establish details.
Save Croydon Libraries 