On Saturday 15th September, we ran our first ever Heritage Open Days event, linking into a national network of heritage sites and organisations who opened their doors to visitors for free across two weeks in September.
Visitors were able to look around the grounds of The Old Library and get up close to the building with our Conservation Architect Alan Gardner, who gave some really interesting talks about the history of the building and its key architectural features. We then encouraged people to follow our blue chalk arrows round the corner to Lister Steps nursery where we were joined by some of the teams helping us throughout the project.
Visitors were able to look around the grounds of The Old Library and get up close to the building with our Conservation Architect Alan Gardner, who gave some really interesting talks about the history of the building and its key architectural features. We then encouraged people to follow our blue chalk arrows round the corner to Lister Steps nursery where we were joined by some of the teams helping us throughout the project.
Our design team from OMI Architects talked people through the plans for the building and created an interactive ‘fly-through’ of the interior, giving visitors an idea of how the finished building might look.
Periscope CIC, who are helping to document and film the project as it progresses, were on hand to talk about our community journalism training programme next year and showed off some of the work they’ve produced on similar projects.
The community archaeology team from the Museum of Liverpool and our building recording volunteers revealed the multiple layers of graffiti they recorded on the building last week and got hands on with some finds from previous archaeological digs; this gave visitors a flavour of what we could find when we run our own dig in the grounds of The Old Library next year!
Periscope CIC, who are helping to document and film the project as it progresses, were on hand to talk about our community journalism training programme next year and showed off some of the work they’ve produced on similar projects.
The community archaeology team from the Museum of Liverpool and our building recording volunteers revealed the multiple layers of graffiti they recorded on the building last week and got hands on with some finds from previous archaeological digs; this gave visitors a flavour of what we could find when we run our own dig in the grounds of The Old Library next year!
Overall, we had 185 visitors throughout the day which is an amazing turnout. Lots of people signed up to hear more about our upcoming volunteering opportunities and added their fond memories to our Memory Line (we’ll share some of these soon). Everyone was so supportive of the project and it was really encouraging to hear that so many people are looking forward to using the building once again. Thank you to everyone who came along, especially our volunteers Azuka & Andrew, who were on hand to welcome people at the library, and Anthony who was busy snapping photographs throughout the day.
We’re hoping this is the first of many successful Heritage Open Days events for The Old Library!
We’re hoping this is the first of many successful Heritage Open Days events for The Old Library!
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