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If you enjoy exploring all forms of textile and multimedia art, this activity is for you.

We experiment with many different techniques (embroidery, weaving, patchwork, quilting, collages…) and we take pleasure in sharing and exploring various types of work together.

Lately we have completed individual and shared projects which may be displayed.

No previous expertise required. Just come and join us!

Welcome to “Write Here, Write Now!”!

Writing and sharing : join this series of workshops for people who love to write in English and don’t mind sharing what they’ve written (although this sharing is not mandatory). We’ll explore different themes and genres, starting with poetry. Mathieu Huvelin, a library volunteer, will guide you through different ways to stimulate your writing, keep you inspired, all in the company of lovers of literature.

“You can make anything by writing” (C.S. Lewis). Following Lewis’s invitation, let’s explore the world at large, as well as your own secret gardens through words…while discovering the unknown realms of the writing of others.

Workshops will be run Wednesday evenings from 6.30 to 9.00 at the library once a month. They are free for library members (maximum of 10 participants). For more information and/or to sign up, please contact the group leader.

Please note that the library is closed for the weekend of the Ascension. We reopen on Tuesday, May 23rd.

Come and play (simple) Bridge (cardgame) at the library! Engage in a brain-stimulating sport: the Mini Bridge Exclusive Society. Discover, learn and play Mini Bridge in a relaxed, casual and informal ambiance. Mini Bridge, as developed by MBES allows and encourages

• conversations while playing the game,
• comments and remarks before, during and after the game,
• second thoughts,
• not taking oneself too seriously,

…in a nutshell, MBES (Mini Bridge Exclusive Society) proposes a different concept from the competing conventional Bridge Clubs.

Feel free to sign up and come and discover this new activity for library members! It is free and open to members of the library. Please contact the library to join!

The library is an authorised test center for the TOEIC Listening and Reading Test (the Test of English for International Communication). For more information please visit our TOEIC page or to sign up go to the official ETS website.

Are you a new mom or dad and looking to meet other English-speaking parents in the area? The BYOB (Bring Your Own Baby) group is a way for families with young children to connect and chat about anything and everything related to the journey into parenthood. This group is for English-speaking parents with a baby (or babies!) under 3 years old so be sure to bring them along! Bilingual and multilingual families are welcome, too. The group will meet one Saturday a month from 4:15-5:15pm in the back of the library.

This activity is free for library members. For more information or to sign up, please contact the group leader.

The film club presents a film in English once a month on a Saturday afternoon. This showing will be of “Vera Drake”, directed by Mike Leigh.

Vera Drake is devoted to her family, looking after her husband and children, her elderly mother, and a sick neighbour. Her shy daughter, Ethel (Alex Kelly), works in a lightbulb factory, and her son, Sid  tailors men’s suits. Her husband, Stanley is a car mechanic. Although Vera and her family are poor, their strong family bonds hold them together. During her working day as a house cleaner, Vera performs constant small acts of kindness for the many people she encounters.

She is a kindly person who is eager to help others. Unknown to her family, she also works secretly, providing abortions for young women. She receives no money for providing this service because she believes that her help is an act of charity to women in trouble. However, her partner Lily (Ruth Sheen), who also carries on a black-market trade in scarce postwar foodstuffs, charges two guineas (two pounds and two shillings: equivalent to £73 in 2021) for arranging the abortions, without Vera’s knowledge.

Watch the trailer here.

Screening begins at 3 o’clock sharp and will be followed by a discussion in English. This activity is free and open to all library members.  

The Saturday Reading Group is for anyone who loves to read, socialize in English, and meet new people. For this meeting, the group will read Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah

Paradise is at once the story of an African boy’s coming of age, a tragic love story, and a tale of the corruption of traditional African patterns by European colonialism. It presents a major African voice to American readers – a voice that prompted Peter Tinniswood to write in the London Times, reviewing Gurnah’s previous novel, “Mr. Gurnah is a very fine writer. I am certain he will become a great one.” Paradise is Abdulrazak Gurnah’s great novel. At twelve, Yusuf, the protagonist of this twentieth-century odyssey, is sold by his father in repayment of a debt. From the simple life of rural Africa, Yusuf is thrown into the complexities of precolonial urban East Africa – a fascinating world in which Muslim black Africans, Christian missionaries, and Indians from the subcontinent coexist in a fragile, subtle social hierarchy. Through the eyes of Yusuf, Gurnah depicts communities at war, trading safaris gone awry, and the universal trials of adolescence. Then, just as Yusuf begins to comprehend the choices required of him, he and everyone around him must adjust to the new reality of European colonialism. The result is a page-turning saga that covers the same territory as the novels of Isak Dinesen and William Boyd, but does so from a perspective never before available on that seldom-chronicled part of the world.

Meetings are once a month on Saturday afternoons starting at 3 pm. Open to all library members. To sign up please contact the group coordinator at bookgroup@ellia.org.

The May read for the book club is “Stoner” by John Williams.

William Stoner enters the University of Missouri at nineteen to study agriculture. A seminar on English Literature changes his life and he never returns to work on his father’s farm. Stoner becomes a teacher. He marries the wrong woman. His life is quiet and after his death his colleagues remember him rarely.

To join the book club please send an email to the group coordinator here.

Come along and bring your knitting,

Have a natter while you’re sitting,

Or learn to knit with wool provided,

Needles loaned and stitches guided.

Knitted garments are très chic,

So be in vogue and start this week.

Knit and Natter is a free activity, open to all library members. No need to reserve, just come and enjoy! If anyone has some extra yarn please bring it in.