I'm still at the CILIP 2023 conference in Birmingham, UK at a session on Climate change and climate justice, and here is a quick liveblog. Adele Karwat (Service Manager, Libraries & Archives, Blackburn Central Library) started by giving an overview of the Blackburn with Darwen authority - for example 21.3% of the population is under 15. The authority has a Climate Emergency Action Plan, and library input has tended to be around everyday things, such as using electricity. They saw their annual Children's Literature Festival as an opportunity to do something more impactful.
Karwat highlighted the contribution of author & poet Christina Gabbitas to the festival (including a Save us from plastic poem). They used the CILIP Green Library fund, and they involved other authors in the festival, reaching over 2000 children. As an example, BB Taylor used Morris the Millipede to get across messages about environmental impact and what you can do to help creatures survive. They had input from the Council on themes to do with recylcing etc. There was also a competition to do with children writing about saving the planet.
The project enabled a lot of positive outcomes including: shared family learning; enabling book gifting; being an acknowledged distibution point for environmental knowledge; raising the library profile; having good partnership with the school, Council etc; empowering children. Thus it developed the environmental literacy of the library, and also contributed to the Councils's strategic goals. There were of course costs, so the CILIP funding was very useful. This is a video of primary school children reciting Gabbitas' poem Save us from plastic https://youtu.be/k90z7cNBAQ8
Another useful link is CILIP's Green Libraries Manifesto
Image by Sheila Webber with Midjourney, I gave up trying to get an image using a "library" prompt as Midjourney's iamge of libraries is so conventional
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