Every year the town where we live holds a 2 week literary festival in late January/early February, with a variety of events, mainly talks about books, literary topics or illustrated visits to places around the world plus some musical events with a literary flavour.
I have participated before, sometimes giving talks (about our street organ and the church organ), mostly attending talks by others, and also playing in our church band in an interactive concert for children (Shake, Rattle and Sing).
As the Sasha Festival was held locally last year, we created our two Dress a Sasha displays with their much more solid backdrops than we had been able to do for USA Sasha festivals, and we couldn't quite bare to dismantle them after all the work we put into them, so Laura, Miranda, Nicholas James and Timothy have stayed on display in our house ever since in their costumes. This was partly because I had the germ of an idea for the local literary festival. Petrana's theme of English Garden had prompted me to illustrate a favourite story book and my daughter to recreate a pre-Raphaelite painting about an English legend. We also had our 2012 English Sasha Festival Dress a Sasha entries to use, especially as one of them depicts a local nursery rhyme.
At one point I contemplated a talk to explain our displays and the versatility of Sasha Morgenthaler's doll creation for telling stories but a talk was likely to only be attended by adults. What I really wanted was to put on a mini exhibition which would encourage engagement with the themes and stories illustrated by our Sasha dolls and perhaps encourage people to try their hand at creating stories with dolls, props and toys. So I devised what I called a story time and literary treasure trail to complement the exhibition.
I negotiated to use a museum display cabinet already in the local library, it usually displays certificates and trophies won by our local Gardening group who beautify the town. The group very kindly removed all their items from the cabinet for what we thought would be 2 weeks. I think they were happy to do it when I explained two of the displays featured gardens, also they're a lovely group of people.
The day before the festival began, I took a couple of hours off work to set up the exhibition display. First the library manager and I had to adjust the level of the suspended glass shelves in the cabinet, which meant removing both glass shelves (thick heavy toughened glass but we didn't want to drop them!) then adjusting the support rods then placing one shelf back and safely storing the other shelf. This is because I needed height for the displays. I had spent the previous weekend gathering everything needed for the 2012 displays and substituting a couple of items which we no longer owned (a soft toy cow and toy dog for Hey diddle diddle), plus doing some boot swapping because I had reused the 2012 long black boots in 2024 and they were definitely needed with the 2012 outfit.
Setting up the 4 displays was a lot of fun and very satisfying. It was also gratifying to have the positive reactions of the library staff when they came to see how it was going. Then the library manager helped me put up the trail clues around the library walls, her enthusiasm and excitement was infectious. I had an answer sheet for people to use and place into a box for a prize draw once the trail is taken down.
The library manager has promoted the trail and exhibition locally, with the result that one of the local junior schools decided to bring a class of children to use the exhibition to support a creative project they are working on, apparently they brought another class the following week, after the literary festival was over. It turned out parents asked the library to keep the trail and exhibition up for a few weeks longer so they could use it for a half term activity. We checked with the literary festival organisers plus the gardening group and town council who all agreed it could stay up for longer. I had a lovely email from one of the gardening group who did the trail with her 12 year old grandson, they both enjoyed it. The lights in the display cabinet were repaired shortly after we set up the display by one of the gardening group, then PAT tested to ensure they were safe to use.
As two of the displays feature nursery rhymes, the library manager and I brain-stormed ideas of how to use those with the youngest children who visit the library for story time. I happened to mention that we have some old nursery rhymes arranged for our street organ and showed her pictures of the organ. The result was the fun we had at the weekly story time session during the literary festival - we brought the street organ into the library for the children, their parents and grandparents to enjoy singing along to the nursery rhymes we had, plus singing others we don't yet have on the street organ. My husband now has a list of another 9 nursery rhymes to arrange and add to the 6 we already play! This session was also part of the literary festival (though the library does story time every week, the two in the literary festival had special literary themes).
So for your enjoyment, in this post are photos of the Sasha dolls on display, plus some photos of the trail sheets around the inside of the library.
We're already discussing a display and trail for next year, possibly featuring our 2017 and 2022 Sasha festival Dress a Sasha entries.
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| Hey diddle diddle - updated from the 2012 Dress a Sasha assembled by my then 8 year old daughter |
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| Fair Rosamund - 2024 Dress a Sasha by my daughter |
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| Fair Rosamund and Hey diddle diddle on the upper shelf |
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| Ride a Cock Horse - my updated 2012 Dress a Sasha display |
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| Ride a Cock Horse |
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| Reuben as the ostler |
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| A Secret Garden - my 2024 Dress a Sasha |
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| Mary, Dickon and Colin in the Secret Garden |
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| The Secret Garden and Ride a Cock Horse in the display cabinet |
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| Library books of nursery rhymes, dolls houses and The Secret Garden |
The literary trail sheets were on walls and windows around the library.
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| Start of the literary trail Sheets 1, 2 and 3 |
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| Sheets 4 and 5 |
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| Sheets 6 and 7 |
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| Sheets 8 and 9 |
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| Sheet 10 |
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| Sheets 11 and 12 |
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| Sheet 13 |
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| Sheets 14, 15 and 16 then instructions to go upstairs for the next sheets |
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| Sheet 17 |
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| Sheet 18 |
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| Sheets 19 and 20 |
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| Sheets 21, 22, 23 and 24 on the wall beside the display cabinet |
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| The display cabinet from the side |
Today, as half term is over, my daughter and I removed the displays from the cabinet and adjusted the shelves back to their former positions in readiness for the gardening group certificates and trophies.
I took these photos just before we removed the doll displays earlier today after 5 weeks on display in the library.
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| Fair Rosamund and Hey diddle diddle with the lights on in the cabinet |
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| The Secret Garden and Ride a Cock Horse just before we removed them from the cabinet |
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| The display cabinet open and lit up just before we removed the displays |
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| Me with the doll display just before we removed it today |
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