The Community Libraries of Providence offer a slew of programming every week for kids and adults at their nine locations around the city – from book clubs, to youth maker- spaces, to free help with your homework or your taxes. We’ll be highlighting a few of those events in this new monthly segment. For March, morning host Luis Hernandez spoke with Cheryl Space, Library Director of the Community Libraries of Providence, and Dhana Whiteing, manager of the Mount Pleasant Community Library.
Transcript:
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Luis Hernandez: There’s a lot going on. Cheryl, I want to start with you. Something exciting, first of all, the weather’s getting warmer, looking forward to the spring and looking forward to gardening. And there’s some gardening events that you’ve got.
Cheryl Space: There are a lot of gardening events. We’re very into that here at the Community Libraries. So you can be a novice gardener all the way to an experienced gardener and participate. I want to highlight just a few.
On Thursday evening starting March 6 from 6-7:30 p.m., outside the Washington Park Library in their plaza, we’re going to have Learn to Grow with 15 Minute Field Trips. That’s going to cover how to start seeds, to growing food from scraps, to actually foraging mushrooms. It’s going to be a fascinating series and that’s for all ages.
If you are more interested in bees, we have a very cool program on Rhode Island’s native bees and gardening practices for pollinators. That’ll be on Wednesday, March 19th from 6-7:30 p.m. at Mount Pleasant.
And finally, I just want to highlight that many of our libraries give away free seeds. So if you’re looking for seeds to get started, just come on by almost any community library and pick up some free seeds for your garden.
Hernandez: We go from sowing seeds to sewing. You’ve got some events for that too, right?
Space: Oh my goodness. We are very into sewing. When we got sewing machines, I never dreamed of how popular this was going to be. But if you are a beginning sewer, you can stop by on Saturday mornings at the Mount Pleasant Library and Siv will help you learn how to sew.
Or on Friday afternoon, you can go to the Wanskuck library. We have hooks and needles and upcycle sewing. You don’t need to walk in with anything and you can do sewing, knitting or crocheting.
And finally, something really cool is we have a tufting machine at the Mount Pleasant library where you can learn to make your own rug. All you need to bring is your own yarn and some strength because you have to actually use a five pound hand tool to propel the yarn into the rug. So that is once a month on Saturdays from 1-5 p.m. And Saturday, March 15, is the next time you can try that out.
Hernandez: All right. So we’ve got gardening, we’ve got sewing, and there’s always a conversation about art and artists coming to the libraries, and you’ve got plenty of those.
Space: Yes, I’m very excited. We have a really special series of four gatherings for artists, and artists who are small business owners, and the library staff and others in the community about how we can build relationships, deepen our understanding of the creative ecosystem in Providence, and start to identify some resources to help support artists in the community. We’re going to have one about spaces where you can make things, featuring our maker spaces at the library. We’re going to have one exclusively in Spanish that’s going to be about art and health. And then we’re going to have one about how to launch small projects, especially in partnership with the community libraries. These are all going to be led by Hernán Joubá, who’s a cultural producer and an artist himself, who’s done extensive work with the community libraries and with the arts community. So we’re really excited about these.
Hernandez: Dhana, the Mount Pleasant community library has three book clubs. I love me some book clubs. So you lead one of them, tell us about it. And what are you reading right now?
Dhana Whiteing: In 2018-2019, I started a book club along with a former employee, Charlene Williams, and we called it Conversations Book Club. We read books by and about people of color. It’s an unusual book club, because I don’t think there are many in the state. So we have people who are very interested, not only people of color, but you know, all groups of people join us. The book we read was “The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store” by James McBride, and it’s a big hit. It starts off in 1972. It’s a historical fiction, and I’d like to say it’s more about “who is it?” rather than “whodunit?” It’s in Pottersville Town, Pennsylvania is the setting and it’s a place where immigrant Jewish people and Black people reside together. It has some, some happy times, it has some really harrowing times, but people pull together to make things work.
Hernandez: Hey, again, I want to say thank you. I’ve been talking with Dhana Whiting, manager of the Mount Pleasant Community Library. And also Cheryl Space, Library Director of the Community Libraries of Providence. Cheryl, Dhana, it’s been a pleasure. Thanks so much for all the great information. You can learn more about what’s going on at the community libraries at clpvd.org.
This interview was reported by The Public’s Radio.
