Black Books Matter UK at artsdepot’s “Book Buzz”

On Sunday the 3rd of April, the Black Books Matter UK team collaborated with artsdepot for their 2022 Book Buzz event. We were one of many organisations throughout the incredibly vast venue hosting workshops and creative events for young people to take part in during the day. We held drop-in sessions of our bespoke Anti-racist Superheroes workshop, facilitating activities including Book Detectives, a storytime of Mixed: An Inspiring Story about Colour by Aree Chung, and a range of creative arts exercises with paints, tissue paper and colouring utensils.

Due to the nature of hosting drop-in sessions, we had the pleasure of meeting a wide range of young people and guardians of all different age groups and cultures. All attendees that we came into contact with seemed to find our station a calming activity after watching one of the many play performances and workshops being put on throughout the day by artsdepot and partnering organisations.

The younger age bracket engaged most with our arts and crafts activities, including designing their own superhero crest and creating their own alien planet, the team was always on hand to help with any inspiration and guidance. On the occasions where we had older young people come to our station, we would make sure to engage them with our Book Detectives exercise where they can use their skills to dectect whether a selection of books displayed to them showed a good variety of skin colour and cultural representation. The young people’s guardians were enthusiastic and showed a lot of interest in our charity, we may even have some new opportunities and volunteers on board due to the fruitful connections that we made.

04/05/2022

Written by Charly Collier