Westside Story

As I've previously mentioned I'm a visual person and the idea of using photographs to tell a story or to engage with our public in a library setting really interests me.  I want just to share our story of using photographs for celebrating a growing community.

Back in Spring of 2014 my colleague Cora and I sat down and came up with a program of events to mark our library been ten years in the community.  It's not a long time for a library I know, but the community bonds we have made over the years are priceless and we are seen as a hub for the area.  Children and elderly use our library on a daily basis, we have active retired groups meeting, knitting groups and a women's group who support women living in the community by providing training, education and craft opportunities.  The place is always buzzing!

Westside Library

We wanted to give something back to the community as our way of saying thank you for making us feel welcome. We invited the National Gallery of Art, Dublin to join us in an outreach program with our local kids who wouldn't ever have the opportunity to visit the Art Gallery in Dublin, we invited Ballet Ireland to host workshops in the library, we invited the National Museum of Ireland, Dublin to host talks and exhibitions on their vast collections - and the amazing thing was all of these institutions agreed to come and celebrate with us! Children got to experience Art in its' many different forms and really enjoyed the experiences we helped to provide.

But we wanted something for those living in the area so we came up with the idea of putting together a project that would reflect the history of the area and its development through the use of maps and photographs.  We called it 'Westside Story' as Westside is the name of our library.  We started by looking at what was available in the Archive and then decided to hold an open evening where people could pop in and chat with us, perhaps share some memorabilia or photos.  We had the ability to scan them and return them on the night.  We thought we might get twenty people but we were overwhelmed by the support and interest with the event seeing closer to sixty people coming to share their stories, photographs and artefacts with us. Even the opportunity for people to share their stories was appreciated and the evening ended up been a long night with plenty of tea drank.

From all these materials we pulled together a wonderful exhibition that showcased the development of the community from early times right up to the development of the Church, shopping centre and library.  The photos and maps were scanned and presented on large exhibition boards with details of each added.  It was pressurized to get the exhibition completed within the timeframe but we and those who came to view it were thrilled with the outcome. I haven't included any of the photographs here due to copyright issues but the exhibition is shown on a regular basis in the library.

It's something that we would love to do again or perhaps help another community exhibit the vast rich heritage that they have.