Sharjah Public Libraries Concludes Year-Long Centenary Celebrations With Community Arts And Education

Sharjah Public Libraries has closed its centennial year with cultural events for children at the Heart of Sharjah and Kshisha Park in Al Rahmaniyah. The activities capped a year-long programme that promoted reading, highlighted cultural heritage and underlined how libraries support a knowledge-based society across Sharjah and the wider UAE.

The centennial programme ran for a full year and followed four main themes that focused on early literary activity, cultural identity, creative talent and long-term heritage preservation. Across these themes, Sharjah Public Libraries organised lectures, workshops, competitions, advocacy campaigns, tours and artistic events that targeted different age groups and interests.

The first theme, "Literary Beginnings," featured a panel discussion on reading culture, a campaign encouraging reading habits and a creative writing workshop. It also included cultural tours in the Eastern Region and poetry sessions. "Cultural Civilisation" covered heritage-focused discussions, traditional attire workshops, children’s contests and book restoration activities, alongside visits to museums exploring early writing.

Under the "Horizons of Writers and Poets" theme, Sharjah Public Libraries offered intellectual lectures, Arabic calligraphy workshops and Islamic ornamentation training. The theme also included poetry gatherings and broader literary events. The final theme, "Cultural Sustainability," highlighted Emirati heritage through practical activities centred on palm trees, papermaking and combined literary and artistic production to link tradition with contemporary creative practice.

The closing celebrations, held under the theme "The Aesthetics of Literary Image and Sound," focused on children’s engagement. At the Heart of Sharjah, Sharjah Public Libraries presented a puppet theatre show for children aged six to 13, in cooperation with Rubu’ Qarn for Theatre and Performing Arts. The performance traced the library’s development from early printed books to current digital services.

The puppet show encouraged children to appreciate Sharjah’s cultural heritage and its role in shaping identity. Sharjah Public Libraries also ran a puppet-making workshop, where participants learned basic design, construction and production techniques. This activity helped link storytelling with practical skills, while reinforcing the value of libraries as spaces for creativity and learning.

At Kshisha Park in Al Rahmaniyah, Sharjah Public Libraries organised two workshops that connected literature with visual expression. A photography workshop, delivered with Shurooq, showed children how to convert stories and poems into images. Another workshop, run with FUNN, guided participants to build visual compositions from texts using nature-inspired materials, including stones and miniature objects prepared by Kshisha Parks, reinforcing the centennial focus on cultural sustainability.

With inputs from WAM