South Tyneside Libraries Pauline Martin Discover South Tyneside Library is a busy central library. The children involved in this project were from a local school, Marine Park Primary. The community we serve at this library has a high percentage of Bangladeshi children. I am the only Arts Award advisor and plan and deliver the sessions with help from Library Colleagues, in this case Clare Craig, Families and Intergenerational Librarian, bringing in artists as required. This project lasted for a four week period and sessions were once a week. The project was stimulated by World Book Day and we used that to engage the group with storytelling books and authors. We explored literature as an art form as well as examining the bigger picture of arts provision in South Tyneside. We also signed the entire group up as library members and they chose their own books to take home at the end of each session. For Part A, discover, we looked at and discussed as a group all of the different art forms we had taken part in and arts organisations that the children were already aware of. This was recorded in their Trinity Discover arts logs. The group looked round the library to see what examples of “art” existed within the building, then we went on a walking tour of South Shields identifying pieces of art and arts organisations around the town. The children decided which areas of the arts they would like to engage with in the future and recorded this in their logs. On World Book Day the group came to the Library to see a traditional storyteller from Animal Story, who illustrated his stories by using real animals! He told a rainforest story and showed the children frogs, millipedes, snakes and spiders. The children took photos at the sessions and as a group, and put the information into their Arts Award logs reflecting on what they enjoyed the most about their experiences. For Part B, find out, the children researched two authors. The first session was using the library computers/ books, etc to research and find out about an author of their choice. The information they found included a biography, bibliography and interesting facts. They reflected on why they had chosen this particular author. The second session was to research a different author. This was done on the library’s iPads and the group presented their findings on an app called Memory Box. At the end of each session the group showed their work, described the authors they had researched and presented their portfolios or memory boxes to the rest of the group. This also completed Discover Part C, share. This led to a general discussion on books/authors and the role of the Library Service as an arts organisation. Through the project the children learned about literature and its place as part of “the arts”. They also became more aware of the arts being all around us. They learned to present their work using different forms, a useful transferable skill. The project benefited the library in by leading to increased library membership. `Arts Award is a good framework to build into what we do. Discover is a good stepping stone for exploring the arts as a whole and then concentrating on literature, an art form which ties into what we deliver on a daily basis.’ Pauline Martin, Arts Award adviser