Category: News

Forest Park Branch: “Gun violence, equality: The raw concerns of Springfield’s youth” (WWLP)

Outside the Forest Park Library are dozens of lawn signs with the raw concerns of Springfield’s youth.

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WWLP) – They can’t vote yet, but Springfield’s youth has a good handle on what issues face their community and their country.

Outside the Forest Park Library are dozens of lawn signs that look like the ones you typically see during election season. If you look closer, however, you’ll see the raw concerns of Springfield’s youth: gun violence, racism, and sexual harassment.

The project was spearheaded by Forest Park Library’s supervisor Alex Remy and allowed Springfield middle and high schoolers to fill in what they wanted ‘Freedom From’ and ‘Freedom For.’ It was inspired by a similar project at Waltham Public Library.

Click through for article and picture gallery.

City of Springfield Preliminary Election September 10

City of Springfield Preliminary Election is Sept 10 – this affects some library locations.

The City of Springfield’s Preliminary Election is Tuesday, September 10. The following library locations will be affected:

  • Forest Park Branch – Closed for library patrons, available only for voting
  • Mason Square Branch – Library open regular hours (1 pm – 5 pm), Community Room used for voting
  • Library Express at Pine Point – Closed for library patrons (per normal Tuesday schedule), available only for voting

To learn more about the election, and to find your polling location, please click here for the City Elections Website.

Springfield children clock over 500,000 summer reading minutes… so far

MassLive highlights Springfield kids’ summer reading totals so far – join our Summer Reading Club to contribute!

From the article at MassLive:

So far this summer, Springfield children have read 27,919 times at 20 minutes a session, amounting to 558,380 minutes of page-turning as part of the Springfield Reads to Build a Better World summer reading project. The results were announced at an assembly Tuesday at Central High School.

“We’re more than halfway there, and we have a few weeks left of the summer,” said Goren-Watts, a principal planner and manager of data, education and municipal technology at the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission. “We need you all to keep reading, tell all your friends to keep reading.”

Springfield Reads to Build a Better World started in 2017. It is made up of 13 summer reading programs throughout the city along with the city’s summer schools.

 

Women@Work: a City-Wide Collaborative

Women@Work: Influence and Impact is a city of Springfield-wide collaborative of programs, exhibitions, and gatherings celebrating the power of women.

Women@Work highlights women’s achievements in visual and performing arts, science and literature,
and community-building and social outreach.

At the hub of this collaborative is a major exhibition at the Springfield Museums
exploring artist Isabel Bishop’s work, which depicts ordinary women in an extraordinary
way. Isabel Bishop’s Working Women: Defying Convention explores how Bishop
not only defined herself as a unique, independent, and unconventional artist, but also
how she changed how artists perceive and portray women.

Bishop’s work and her subject matter prompted Museum Director Kay Simpson and her
team to think about broadening the examination of women and their work and to involve
community partners from the arts and culture, area colleges, the media, social services
and businesses led by women.

Simpson convened a group of stakeholders and the idea blossomed into a year-long
calendar of exhibits and events highlighting the work women have done and do today.
Please join us to celebrate the influence and impact of Women@Work.

Click here to view the Women@Work events calendar.

Special thanks to TSM Design for the Women@Work logo.