Children's Promise at Camberley Library

Over the next few days, we’ll be showcasing some of the amazing projects our teams worked on last year. These projects have made positive impacts on our local communities, generated additional footfall, increased use, and improved the lives of Surrey residents. The second project is from Camberley Library who have gone beyond what is expected of them and showed a clear commitment to delivering the Children’s Promise in their library.

After a period of co-design consultation with local residents including those in key deprived areas, partners, and key services they have produced a varied and targeted programme of events specifically for families the residents of Camberley. The aim was to increase children and families attendance and participation at Camberley Library.

Staff at Camberley Library successfully ran 261 children’s events from April to November 2022 with 3444 children joining in with the activities. These events have led to 119 new library members now regularly using the library. Events have been thoughtfully designed to include all ages and backgrounds using a ‘pay what you can’ system to ensure those from different economic backgrounds are fully able to participate.

These events have followed the Libraries Connected calendar of events or National and International celebration days ensuring that the library event offer is diverse, inclusive, and welcoming to everyone in the community. New and innovative regular events aimed at attracting new audiences have been started such as Intergenerational Storytime, Chatterbooks and Writing Adventurers.

Over the 6-week summer holidays the Camberley Library team delivered one event per day including STEM Storytimes for older children, DNA extraction from Strawberries, Fossils from Coffee Grounds, Becoming a News Reporter for the Day to ensure that there was a family friendly activity on every day for families to attend.

Camberley Library work with local partners to deliver events outside of the library. This has led to interesting partnerships; one example is the new link with the Love Camberley events team. As part of the Love Camberley programme, the library was able to run events in the main square inside the shopping centre during school holidays. This was a great way to promote and make Camberley Library more visible, while offering family friendly activities from stories to crafts.

Another example is the library going out to community venues across Camberley, they regularly visit the High Cross Church toddler group and Old Dean Tuesday Tots group. The staff deliver Storytime and Rhymetime, helping to increase language and literacy with families. As some of the families are reluctant to come into the library, they sign them up for library cards at the sessions and bring a selection of books, they can choice from to be borrow. They are also able signpost to local services such as the Family Information Service and Family Centres.

The Camberley Library Team deliver all the above on top of the regular tasks required of them as part of the day-to-day library services. Everything they do is done with a smile, and a can-do attitude.