Five Leaves Bookshop: Events

Five Leaves, Nottingham’s independent city centre bookshop, was delighted earlier this year to receive National Lottery funding from Arts Council England for a programme of five online event series in 2021. Pippa Hennessey tells us more:.

Since May 2020 we have been running online events with increasing success, including a pre-recorded series of interviews with local authors, a night school on Irish history and literature, and book launches and poetry readings galore. You can watch recordings of over 50 of those events on the Five Leaves Bookshop YouTube channel .

We have seen our audience grow in number and geographical location over the last ten months, attracting viewers across the UK, Ireland, Europe, New Zealand, Australia, USA, Canada, Israel, and more. While face-to-face events are missed by our regular crowd, others who prefer not to (or are unable to) go out at night have appreciated the opportunity to become involved in the Five Leaves community. On top of that, we have been able to attract guest authors from across the UK and beyond, giving people the chance to hear from writers they would never be able to see in person.

The new events supplement this continuing programme, and cover four central themes: Modern Women Artists, Autism and the Arts, Cultural Diversity in Children’s Books and Contemporary Irish Authors (in association with Dublin UNESCO City of Literature). Later in the year there will be six international events in collaboration with other UNESCO Cities of Literature: Seattle, Melbourne, Reykjavík, Óbidos, Utrecht and Lillehammer.

Five Leaves owner Ross Bradshaw says: “Five Leaves Bookshop is pleased to have secured Arts Council funding for this BSL-interpreted programme, which gives us an opportunity to go in more depth into subjects we’re interested in. Five Leaves is amongst the first independent bookshops securing Arts Council funding for events and we are pleased that ACE now offers such support to our sector.”

The bookshop’s extensive and varied programme of live events, including poetry readings, political discussions, arts and history talks, and book launches, has enabled us to build a local community, and online events such as the book launch for House of Music, Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason’s autobiography about the Nottingham family whose seven children are all professional musicians, have encouraged audiences from around the world to join that community.

The first ACE-funded event series, on Modern Women Artists and in partnership with Eiderdown Books, has now finished. The Autism and the Arts series, in association with Autistic Nottingham, started on March 30^th – remaining events feature Sonia Boué, contemporary artist and pioneer of inclusive arts practices, and Katherine May and Rhiannon Lloyd-Williams, talented writers who have a lot to say about autism. The Diversity in Children’s Literature series has just been finalised – it will be presented by our own Deirdre O’Byrne and starts with a panel discussion, including Michael Rosen and Sanchita Basu De Sarkar (owner of the Children’s Bookshop in Muswell Hill), on the history, present and future of cultural diversity in children’s literature.

We’re still working on ideas for events, exhibitions and workshops to supplement the main events programme – watch this space! Working with our partners, including Inspire, will continue to help us expand the range of events on offer. Do check out our events page and make the most of the chance to see and hear writers you might never have been able to see face-to-face. While we’re pleased to be open to customers once again, we won’t be able to hold events in the shop for at least a couple of months, and we plan to continue to supplement those events with online talks, book launches and readings.”

You can join Five Leaves’ mailing list

https://fiveleavesbookshop.co.uk/newsletter-sign-up/

to keep up to date with our events, and other exciting happenings at the shop. In recent news, for instance, we have been once again shortlisted for the UK Independent Bookshop of the Year award, an accolade we won in 2018. New events are being added all the time – don’t miss out!