Blog
Tags: Archeology, Conservation, Books, Cornwall, Archives, History, Collections
Cultural exchanges – the library joins forces with the PZ-Concarneau Twinning Society
Many of you will be familiar with the concept of ‘twinned towns’. Twinning became popular in Great Britain after the Second World War, in the belief that building links and exchanges between individual towns and cities would bring reconciliation and prosperity after years of conflict. Twinning Associations aim to promote international friendship and understanding.
Penzance is twinned with four different towns throughout the world – Bendigo, Australia; Cuxhaven, Germany; Nevada City, California, and Concarneau, Brittany. There is a separate twinning association for each twin town. Their work is dedicated to helping their schools, sporting organisations, clubs, and other groups to forge links with those in our twin towns.
After a delayed start due to the pandemic, Morrab Library and the Penzance Concarneau Twinning Society finally had the opportunity to meet and begin what we hope will be a long and fruitful association. The aim is to forge links between ourselves and the Mediatheque in Concarneau. The Mediatheque, or media library, is the town’s public library, part of a network servicing the region, which provides a variety of both paper and digital services to the area.
On Sunday June 26th over the Golowan weekend, Penzance welcomed a delegation from the Concarneau Twinning Society, who paid a visit to Morrab Library. They loved the library, its heritage and atmosphere, and spent far longer than planned exploring the building. We exchanged books – donations from us included volumes about Cornwall, popular fiction and children’s books all in English, and they presented a wonderful selection of French language titles. These will be catalogued into our collections in due course and available for loan, and identified by the special bookplate made by the Twinning Society. We were also given some lovely maps and guides to Concarneau, so if anyone is planning a holiday in Brittany, drop in for some information!
The library looks forward to future collaboration with the Concarneau Mediatheque, and the Twinning Society, which may even include a librarian exchange (a certain librarian has her fingers crossed!), alongside sharing more books and information about our beautiful towns.
Dennis Myner, Patricia Eschen and The Dennis Myner Trust
Morrab Library’s inaugural poetry competition is sponsored by The Dennis Myner Trust which continues the legacy of member and invaluable contributor to the library’s longevity – Dennis Myner.
Who was Dennis Myner?
Dennis Myner was born in London in 1927. During WWII, his family moved to St. Albans where he later qualified as an architect. He moved to Penzance for his mother’s health in the late 1950s and in the early 1960s built his own house in St. Ives, where he set up his architectural practice.
Dennis frequented the Morrab Library’s Photo Archive during his retirement where he would purchase photographs to recreate in paint. This fervent hobby was encouraged by his sister, Patricia Eschen, who bought him his first set of oils and brushes when he retired, saying that he would need something to keep him busy! He set himself the goal of painting 300 pictures and had reached an impressive total of 753 just a few months before he died.
Dennis dedicated the latter part of his life to supporting Morrab Library and it became his life’s ambition to help ensure its future was secure. An incredibly determined man, he devoted fifteen years to obtaining planning permission for a much-needed extension to the Library which was completed in 2013.
When Dennis passed away in 2012 he left hundreds of his paintings to the library, a selection of which are on display in the Photo Archive. Our lovely volunteer, David Sleeman wrote a fascinating blog about the history of one of the scenes that Dennis depicted which you can read here.
Who was Patricia Eschen?
Our new poetry competition at the Library, the Patricia Eschen Prize for Poetry, acknowledges the generous support of Dennis’ beloved older sister and only sibling – Patricia Eschen. Patricia was outgoing and well-travelled and despite living in California for most of her adult life, she would return to Cornwall to visit Dennis regularly.
She loved the Arts and attended the opera, ballet and museums around the world wherever she travelled. The Library’s Art Room is named in her honour, and the prize will continue her patronage of the arts.
Patricia was instrumental in Dennis taking up oil painting. Many of the photographs from her travels were used as subject matter for his artwork, as well as photographs he purchased from the Morrab Library Photo Archive. Without her encouragement of his painting, Dennis would not have visited the library and hence there would be no Dennis Myner Trust today.
How do The Myner Trust help the Library today?
The Dennis Myner Trust helps to support the library through donations which are used to fund projects such as the bespoke conservation-grade photographic storage cabinets, computers, and professional scanning equipment in the Photo Archive, which has proved invaluable in our ongoing digitisation programme.
We are delighted to be able to launch the international poetry competition – ‘Patricia Eschen Prize for Poetry’ – from our very special library here in Penzance.
Our Library members have always shown a fervour for poetry – our earliest archive records reveal that poetry has been purchased for the library since our establishment in 1818. We have a thriving poetry group and a dedicated Poetry Room in the library. We are looking forward to shining a spotlight on poetry through our new competition this summer at the Morrab and we would not be able to do so without the support of the Dennis Myner Trust.
Social prescribing and Morrab Library – can you help?
For any number of reasons, many of us are finding ourselves needing a little support to make that step out into the world – to join new groups, take part in activities, or make new friends. This isn’t only on emotional grounds – it can also be for purely practical reasons. Where might one start? Sometimes, we just need a little bit of help to get us back on track and heading in the right direction to improve our health and wellbeing.
Morrab Library is teaming up with the local NHS Social Prescribing team to offer some help. These are the people who take a holistic approach to people’s health and wellbeing. They connect people to community groups and services for practical and emotional support. Social Prescribers also support existing community groups to be accessible and sustainable, and help people to start new groups, working collaboratively with local partners.
It’s an option for a wide range of people including anyone with long term medical conditions, people needing support with mental health, those feeling lonely or isolated, and those with complex social needs. You can contact Social Prescribers directly or be referred via a number of local agencies including GPs, pharmacies, social care services, community and social enterprises and job centres.
Morrab Library and the Penwith Social Prescribing team are working together to start a new group (or two!) at the library. The idea is for an informal book group – where people can get together, over tea and biscuits of course, to share an enjoyment of fiction, to find recommendations for your next book, to talk about books and reading and to meet people.
We’d like to target two groups – those struggling to ‘get back out’ and to meet new people, as well as a group specifically for young people.
To make this really work though, we need you to help us make sure we create the best kind of groups possible which maximise the support and help we can offer.
Here is a link a brief survey from the Social Prescribing team which we ask you might consider completing to make sure we get it right. We have a box at the library for you to drop in your replies or you can email this form to enquiries@morrablibrary.org.uk.
