Happy bats

These cheeful bats advertised a kids' program.  Their 3rd dimension and flying off the bulletin board edge made people notice unlike yet another regular poster, and the program filled up.

More birds

A vintage bird salt and pepper collection on display

We found some great kids' drawing paper with gold frames printed around the edge.  With some coloured pencils and a sign asking for birds, we scattered the paper on some tables in the childrens' area.  Soon we were bursting with beautiful drawings!  This was the staff favourite- an owl wearing a tiara.  She won a home made cake with a shredded wheat bird nest on top.  Inside were Kinder Eggs.  The happy little girl had invited her friends over for a special tea party the afternoon she picked it up!

Just ask

All we had to do was ask.  We put up a poster and spread the word.  The library needed art.  A dozen artists lent us pieces to hang in the branch for four months.  It was supposed to be community art, but a teenage girl from a town 200 km away heard about it from a friend on Facebook.  She talked her mother into driving down with her painting because she was so excited to have somewhere to hang it. 

There are also three lovely owls.  A photograph of a snowy owl in a tree.  A lovely owl quilt for the program room.  And this fine screech owl carved from reclaimed wood and painted.

Graffiti birds

Two ideas we're playing with:

1/ branch themes to build some buzz
Our fall library system theme was arts, and there was a great course on building a birdhouse.  We riffed on that and did all kinds of bird programming.  We asked our artist customers to lend us bird paintings, and we put a collection of salt and pepper birds in the Cabinet of Curiosities.  One of the customers had a Youtube video of herself doing a bird drawing speeded up, so we burned that to DVD in a repeating loop and played it on the big TV.  We even made some bird nest cupcakes out of coconut (the only one who didn't like those was the cleaning lady)

2/ spontaneous participative activities
We put out some great drawing paper with gold frames printed around the edge for kids to draw us some birds.  We also put out some felt pens designed for windows along the ledge  in the foyer.

The two ideas came together with some sanctioned bird graffiti!  We got a whole flock of birds, a poem, an "I love books", and some random scribbles. 

More bird images to follow...