Every Tuesday at 2:15 pm, visitors to Jesmond Library’s Craft and Chat sessions head into the library and towards a room at the back end of the first floor of the library.   

It’s a hidden nook that only a select few who are regular goers know their way around and is one of the five rooms at the Jesmond Library that can be rented for £10 an hour. 

The Craft and Chat sessions are designed to bring together the community with a love of crafts. While working on their latest projects, attendees can natter and build up connections that have been hard hit in the last few years thanks to lockdowns and increasing social isolation. 

The ladies that attended the Craft and Chat session that week was sewing crafts for the festive season. Anne Smith, who was born in Jesmond 83 years ago, had a pair of socks that she was making for one of her grandchildren for Christmas. Another attendee, Sue King, who runs the Craft and Chat sessions and who has raised her three boys in Jesmond for the past 40 years, was knitting a scarf.  

But these weekly meetups threatened to end during the pandemic. The Guardian recorded a major decrease in “physical library visits fell from 214.6m to 59.7m in the year to March 2021, a drop of 72%, as COVID-19 restrictions shut branches”. However, Jesmond Library “was one of the very few that fought to stay open during covid,” said King.  

Jesmond Library runs off volunteers and donations, said King, and “after seeing how much money and effort was put into keeping it alive, we couldn’t let covid destroy our community hub”. 

The library has managed to survive the pandemic and is in good financial health, but it’s down to donations from the local community and room rent from events like the Craft and Chat sessions. Smith said: “There was an understanding between residents that to keep the community running there needed to be lots of help financially”.  

The library wasn’t the only one that had to fight to recover from covid. King said: “Covid instilled fear for the elderly, and because of this the idea of leaving the house and getting back involved within the community was a challenge”. 

Smith added: “But what was truly wonderful is that through the pandemic the Library stayed open, which meant that you could collect books and rediscover reading again.” She called it “a true blessing during such a dark time”. 

King volunteered throughout the pandemic distributing and disinfecting the books as they came and went. “As soon as it was all safe again, everyone slowly crept back into the library, and my fears that the library was falling, all disappeared”. 

The library has become a hub for many communal sessions and meetups within Jesmond since the end of the pandemic. King, head of the Craft and Chat sessions, said “volunteers host events on a daily basis here and it is the best way to get Jesmond residents involved”.  

Getting involved is at the heart of the community and has been since the library was taken into community ownership. King insisted that ‘this fight for the library was all thanks to Chris Clarke’.  

King carried on by saying ‘We owe it to Clarke, really, for keeping our community so intact. That although he is retired, he now still dedicates his time and money in to community development where everyone feels obliged to participate as well’. 

King repositioned herself in her chair and explained: “The council threatened to close the library down 10 years ago, actually, but the residents were against this decision”. Her hand clenched at the table reminding her of the thought that the library was nearly removed even before the pandemic – a thought that seemed to upset the ladies.  

This is now why the library runs off donations. The charity is called Friends of Jesmond. But many of the libraries that were forced to shut down during the pandemic did so because the council didn’t have enough funding to keep them all afloat.  

In that way, the 2013 council withdrawal of funding put Jesmond’s community in a better position, said Smith. “Jesmond Library volunteers took control well before that which gave them an upper hand when it came to funding during the pandemic.” 

It allowed community-building events like the Craft and Chat session to continue, offering a time and place where the ladies that came could reminisce about their memories of Jesmond. This room was a place that brought people together through the common interest of sewing and the love for the Jesmond Community. 

The ladies seemed to all know one another as they seemed very close, almost like childhood friends. Kin, head of the Craft and Chat session, chuckled at that remark and admitted: ‘“we’ve just met actually. But we find common interest with everyone that comes and conversation flows, so I suppose that must give the impression we are old friends’”.  

Smith agreed with King. “Sewing is my therapy,” she said. “I’ve done it since I was a young girl and it brings me peace and enjoyment – an escape really”. 

Coming to these weekly meetups was important to the craft community in Jesmond, offering people a place to socialise and connect with others.  

Looking around the room with the session coming to an end, it was clear to see that this was more than just a regular craft and chat session, but rather a time and a place that made these ladies feel like they had a purpose. Making crafts during this festive season was a pleasure for them and that being part of the Jesmond community brought them joy that their contributions were meaningful.