Summer reading challenge workshop evaluations

A brief report covering community programme activity across nearly 40 libraries from mid-July to the end of August, 2026, which hosted GLAM Racket workshops as part of the Summer Reading Challenge: ‘Rough Music Rhyme Time’ and ‘What Did the Hippie Have in His Bag?’ at libraries in Camden, Merton, Tower Hamlets, Greenwich, Sutton, and the City of London.

The aim was threefold: to get a first-hand sense of what's happening across different parts of London's library service, to connect with the enjoyment of community librarianship on the ground, and to start identifying people and opportunities that could feed into the broader aims of the GLAM Racket project regardless of whether the authority has signed up or not.

Staff and volunteers were very welcoming and supportive throughout, often before they knew who I was or what the workshop was there to do — which says a lot about the openness of the network. So big thanks to the library teams.

Families took part with real enthusiasm, and I've started to bump into some of the same families at other events across London, which points to a genuine, if informal, community forming around London Libraries. One grandparent with two grandchildren from Romford attended a session at Barbican, and then I bumped into them at Museum of London, Docklands, and similarly with another family from Newham. Against the wider backdrop at the moment, it was a good reminder of how much joy and connection is happening at a local level — and a useful signal for where London Libraries  — and GLAM Racket —  could grow next.

Rough Music Rhyme Time (headcount excludes adults) 

28 sessions delivered, 566 participants, an average of 20 attendees per session. This ranged from a family with 1 baby at one library to 70 children and their families at another. Some sessions were during a regular rhyme time; others were ad hoc. All were drop-in, open-access sessions for pre-school children and their families, so the consistency of that average across 28 sessions points to demand.

Hippie Sessions (headcount excludes adults) 
10 sessions delivered, 104 participants, averaging just over 10 per session. Capacity was set at 15 with some flexibility, so sessions have generally run at or near capacity. This was a longer in-depth family learning session with several activities 

General participant feedback across both programmes was consistently strong, with ratings clustering at the top of the scale. Recurring themes include:

- High engagement from both children and accompanying adults, driven by hands-on, interactive activity (craft, song, and instrument-making)

- Word of mouth and staff recommendation sitting alongside library newsletters and/or event web pages as routes by which families hear about sessions

- Comments pointing to a wider social impact beyond the activity itself — parents specifically cited library sessions as a reason to be active, which speaks to the role these programmes play in mitigating isolation during the early years of parenting