2022 Highlights – QPLA North Qld Regional Rep

2022 was a great year for libraries in North Queensland.

Below are a few special stories shared with Northern Regional Rep Jacob Schaumburg from Charters Towers Regional Council’s Excelsior Library and Burdekin Shire Council’s Burdekin Library, based in Ayr and Home Hill.

Anne Tweedie from Excelsior Library:

The Excelsior Library, on behalf of the Charters Towers Regional Council, recently held the Christmas Stable event on Wednesday, 14th December 2022.

To say it was a huge success is an understatement – we have never encountered so many people in the Library at once and we have received nothing but positive feedback from the community.  Our carpark was full with animals from ‘Melville’s Farm’ and included llamas, goats, chickens, ducks and even a donkey.  ‘Ice Cream by Birdie’ supplied the masses with free ice-cream, ‘Gemini Face Painting’ did an amazing job on all of the smiling happy faces and our Activities Co-ordinator Amanda, supplied many different Christmas crafts for the children to create and take home.  The highlight was a special guest appearance by Santa who handed gifts to the children and was available for photos.

Due to the success of this event, the excelsior Library will look to run this again in future years.

The event was an initiative of the Charters Towers Regional Council and funded by the Queensland Government, Mental Health and Wellbeing Community Package under Queensland’s Economic Recovery Strategy.

Thanks to Anne and Excelsior Library for sharing this. What a brilliant outcome the team has produced. Charters Towers is still producing gold after all these years!

Nick Wiseman from Burdekin Shire Council:

These holidays have seen some great success holding Dungeons and Dragons for Kids, Poly Bridge 2, Robotics and a DIY hologram projector sessions. They were in such demand that I needed to add more robotics and Poly Bridge sessions. Although no formal sessions were planned, the 3D printers were up and running. The kids were very excited to see products being created from nothing.

This year is looking to be an exciting and busy one with lots of interest in several new programs, such as after school code club, board game sessions and, potentially a video game club! We’re also planning to create our own Makerspace here in the Burdekin.

A big thanks to Nick and the Burdekin Library for sharing their success. The Burdekin team do wonderful things, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

I’m positive there are more success stories worth sharing in the North Queensland region, please feel free to share these with me for my next regional highlights post: Jacob.schaumburg@townsville.qld.gov.au

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