Regular Activities

Lambeth Libraries Wriggle & Rhyme for under 5s

Join our librarians for songs, stories and rhymes for the under 5s. Monday to Friday - excluding Bank Holidays - 10.30am to 11am. Facebook live everyday @ Facebook/Lambeth Libraries: Wriggle and Rhyme Online.

Homework Help

Homework Help - photo: Pixnio

Monday to Friday 3.30pm to 4.30pm

Lambeth Library staff are here to support children and young people with their homework. If you have an enquiry with your homework, please contact us online at Ask a Librarian. 

Code Clubs for Kids

Tuesdays 4pm – Contact Will at CarnegieLibrary@lambeth.gov.uk

Sundays 12pm - contact Ana at ARodriguezPanadero@lambeth.gov.uk

Code Clubs for children aged 9-13 provide step-by-step activity sheets to create games, animations, and websites, learning the key concepts of coding at the same time. 

Book at Breakfast - book chat

A shared reading group experience from the comfort of your own home. There is no need to read aloud or speak - it's fine to just listen or to chat about books.

Wednesdays 9.30am. Durning Library with Edwin. Contact Edwin at EEMacrae@lambeth.gov.uk for  meeting ID.

Thursdays 10.30am. Brixton Library with Sophia. Contact Sophia SNeizerAwuku@lambeth.gov.uk for meeting ID.

Reading Groups online

You can find more information about each of the groups and what they are discussing on your local library Facebook page or email me at todell@lambeth.gov.uk. All welcome.

English Conversation Café

Café open Mondays 1.30pm to 2.15pm

Want to practice speaking English or need help with English pronunciation?

Visit our virtual café and join our friendly group, who will encourage you to be confident in a range of situations that will assist you to improve your spoken English in every day conversations.

Bring our own your cappuccino, espresso or iced tea! Contact Liz at durninglibrary@lambeth.gov.uk for meeting ID and log in details.

From our Friends

Spread The Word’s Spring 2021 Season

We are delighted to announce our spring programme, running from January-March. We are continuing to keep our programme accessible to writers by offering free and low-cost opportunities alongside bursary places as part of our create-write-connect campaign.

Come and be part of an online writing community with our free Write Together workshops led by Michael Donkor for writers of all levels. Our free Developing Tutors workshop programme is back with Alex Marshall, Lui Sit and Christina Carè on developing your writing craft and practice. Our low-cost activities includes the following masterclasses: How to find the perfect idea for your children’s book with Jasmine Richards, Writing Love Scenes with Leone Ross and Research for Fiction Writing with Saeida Rouass. Each masterclass offers five bursary places for writers.

Our writing course this season is Getting Your Short Story Ready for Publication with Luan Goldie, which has concessionary prices and five bursary places for writers.

Writers will also have the opportunity to book onto our series of 1-2-1 sessions led by our Writer Development Manager, Eva Lewin, which includes three Fiction Surgeries (18 January, 15 February, 22 March) and two Getting to Where You Want to Be sessions (1 February, 15 March).

We welcome all writers onto our workshops. If you have access requirements and would like to attend, please email hello@spreadtheword.org.uk to discuss how we can support your needs.

Vickery's Folk Flora: An A-Z of the Folklore and Uses of British and Irish Plants

Tuesday 12 January, 7pm
Online event: To register email:
CarnegieLibrary@lambeth.gov.uk

Join Roy Vickery of South London Botanical Institute to discuss his book, Vickery's Folk Flora: An A-Z of the Folklore and Uses of British and Irish Plants.

Roy’s book is a dictionary of British (native, naturalised and cultivated) plants and the folklore associated with them. Unlike many plant-lore publications Vickery's Folk Flora tells us what people currently do and believe, rather than what Victorians did and believed. The result is a vivid demonstration that plant folklore in the British Isles is not only surviving but flourishing; adapting and evolving as time goes by, even in urban areas. Event organised by the Friends of Carnegie Library.

Together for Mental Wellbeing with Linda Bryant

Monday 18 January, 7pm
Online event. To register email:
durninglibrary@lambeth.gov.uk 

Together was formed in 1879, they have always believed that people with mental health issues have the right and the abilities to lead independent, fulfilling lives as part of their communities. Join CEO Linda Bryant to discuss the work of this local organisation based in Walnut Tree Walk. Organised by the Friends of Durning Library.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Be the light in the darkness is the theme for Holocaust Memorial Day 27 January 2021. It encourages everyone to reflect on the depth’s humanity can sink to, but also the ways individuals and communities resisted that darkness to ‘be the light’ before, during and after genocide. Join the online ceremony live. Register here to receive information about how to watch the ceremony at 7pm on 27 January.

Anna Blasiak discusses the life and times of Lili Stern-Pohlmann, Polish Holocaust survivor

Monday 25 January, 7pm
Online event: Eventbrite booking

As part of Lambeth’s commemoration of Holocaust Memorial Day we will be in discussion with Anna Blasiak, author of Lili – a book-length conversation with Lili Stern-Pohlmann. This is the story of Lili Pohlmann's incredible childhood and survival as a Jewish girl during the Second World War in Lwów (Lemberg under German occupation, now Lviv in the Ukraine). After the war Lili came to London in the first of three transports of Jewish children from Poland. She arrived in the British capital on her sixteenth birthday. She still lives in London. Anna’s book focuses on Lili's childhood, wartime experiences, her arrival in London and years shortly after the war. These experiences are accompanied by historical commentaries, as well as more personal pieces from Anna Blasiak, framing and contrasting Lili's story and experiences with those of a different generation, growing up years after the war in Poland, a place where the vanished Jews left a painful, gaping hole.

Join Anna to discuss Poland and the Holocaust through the eyes of one survivor.

When the World Was Ours with Liz Kessler

Wednesday 27 January.
Online event for Schools bookings: Contact Sandra on sdavidson@lambeth.gov.uk

A powerful and heart-breaking novel about three childhood friends living during the Second World War whose fates are closely intertwined, even when their lives take very different courses.

Vienna. 1936. Three young friends – Leo, Elsa and Max – spend a perfect day together, unaware that around them Europe is descending into a growing darkness, and that events soon mean that they will be cruelly ripped apart from each other. With their lives taking them across Europe – to Germany, England, Prague and Poland – will they ever find their way back to each other? Will they want to?  Inspired by a true story, When The World Was Ours is an extraordinary novel that is as powerful as it is heartbreaking, and shows how the bonds of love, family and friendship allow glimmers of hope to flourish, even in the most hopeless of times. Join Liz and Lambeth Libraries to discuss her book and the Holocaust.

Business Start-ups in London Libraries

Our Start-ups in London Libraries workshops are now available as webinars which are accessible remotely, wherever you are. Check out our January schedule and register your place on one of the online workshops. This project is designed to help aspiring entrepreneurs turn their business idea into a reality.