lilipad culture
After years of working inside our lilipad libraries, we have started to bring this work into public space. Through exhibitions, festivals and cultural events, we share different narratives: shaped by children and young people themselves. This is part of how we approach advocacy, making space for their work and perspectives to exist, and for a wider public to encounter them.
Stories deserve audiences
At lilipad, we see culture as an essential part of community life. Alongside our libraries and workshops, we curate exhibitions, festivals, performances, talks and public events that bring together artists, children, educators, families, civil society actors and audiences around shared stories.
Many of the children and young people we work with navigate multiple challenges and complex realities on a day-to-day basis. Their experiences are rarely reflected in mainstream cultural spaces. Our programmes create opportunities not only for participation, but for these stories to be encountered by wider audiences.
Working in partnership with art galleries, public libraries, festivals and cultural institutions, we commission new work, support artistic collaboration and create platforms where multilingual and postmigrant perspectives become part of public cultural life. Whether through our own children's literature festival, a photography exhibition, a public reading or a community celebration, we believe culture has the power to build connections across borders and across generations.
BEYOND THE LIBRARY
Whose Stories Get Told
Public culture does not reflect every childhood equally. Some children grow up surrounded by books, theatres and galleries that speak to their experiences. Others rarely see themselves represented, or have opportunities to contribute their own stories.At lilipad, we believe children should not only experience culture but help create it. Through writing, photography, performance, illustration and film, they produce work that reflects their own perspectives and ways of seeing the world.
From Library to Public Life
Some projects continue beyond the library into exhibitions, festivals and public events, where children's poems, photographs, performances and artwork are shared with wider audiences. These settings allow the work to take on a new life, creating opportunities for dialogue between children, artists, families, educators and the wider public.
Children As Authors
Children create work that is personal, imaginative and entirely their own. We support them in developing original ideas rather than speaking on behalf of a community or experience.Their poems, photographs and performances are presented because they have artistic and cultural value in their own right. Children are recognised not only as participants, but as authors.
A Wider Public, A Different Encounter
Public culture shapes the stories we encounter and the perspectives we come to know. By presenting children's work in cultural spaces across the city, we create opportunities for audiences to engage with ideas, experiences and imaginations they might not otherwise encounter. Each exhibition, performance or publication becomes part of a broader cultural landscape that reflects a greater diversity of childhoods, languages and ways of seeing the world.
Donate
Keep our libraries running
Your support helps ensure children continue to have access to spaces where their language, curiosity, and imagination are taken seriously.
