Recent Community Projects

Life Library: Blackburn and Darwen

A six-week cross-cultural storytelling/creativity/integration programme of events at Darwen library and The Bureau, Blackburn aimed at adults.

We brought together over fifty people of different cultures to get to know each other through sharing their stories and artefacts.

This project - part of Our Community – Our Future and organised in partnership with Darwen Asylum Refugee Enterprise - has been funded by Blackburn with Darwen BC and is generously supported by our Library Service. It is run by storyteller Jacqueline Harris and artist Marjan Wouda.

The Art of Isolation: Book

122-page A4 soft-back book. Material gathered, designed and edited for Age UK Lancashire to accompany the online art exhibition: The Art of Isolation.

The aim was to present both the stories and the talent of people over 50 across Lancashire during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

This was an open call and the result was 47 artistic contributions with the stories behind them, and about their lives during lockdown. The stories were often sometimes poignant, often hopeful and always generous. They captured the individual accounts and feelings of a group whose voices were rarely heard in the media at a time of crisis for so many.