Every year, the Confucius Institute takes a day to spend some time to engage with our local communities, and this year we had 2 fun packed days. Here in Lancaster, we had a day of events in Lancaster Central Library, while in Carlisle, our teaching site at Tullie House took over Carlisle Library!

The team from our teaching site at Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery in Carlisle kicked off events with a host of activities for children and families, on Saturday 21st September at Carlisle Library. They created a lovely range of activity tables including Chinese calligraphy, a section all about the Chinese zodiac, costumes, arts and crafts, and even painting traditional Chinese fans and umbrellas!

The following week, our team here at Lancaster University took over Lancaster Central Library, and we had our own collection of activities on offer to anyone interested. These included demonstrations with our Guzheng, teaching people how to play, coupled with traditional Chinese dance routines performed by one of our teaching assistants. In addition, we were delighted by the response to our stall offering tasters of Chinese Tea & Mooncakes. This was in tandem with a video screening and explanations from our staff about the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, one of the most important events in the Chinese calendar.

The response we had to both events has been fantastic- at Lancaster alone, our team had interactions with easily over 100 people throughout the day. We'd like to thank all the members of our team who participated in both events, and to everyone who came along to take part. We hope you all had fun, and we had such a nice reaction from visitors to both events!