|
This is an event that we have done several times in Ross &
Cromarty, sometimes to tie in with an author visit, where the
author was writing about Spain and sometimes to launch a travel
collection or an international fiction collection. We have also
used it to add an extra dimension to a reading group meeting,
where the featured book had a Spanish setting. It could be
adapted to link with any other country or continent even, as
long as you can handle the food and drink aspect the beauty of
tapas and sangria is that they are simple to prepare and serve.
The hope is that the food and drink entice people to attend and
add an extra dimension to the event. It is also great for
involving folk who already have a link of some sort to whichever
country you are featuring we found this year that quite a few
of the folk working in the local hotels and coming in to use the
Peoples Network were Spanish.
Basically the
idea is extremely simple you serve sangria and a selection of
tapas (4-5 choices is plenty) to welcome people to the event,
replenish plates and glasses in the middle of whatever talk is
going on and then again at the end if they want to stay and
chat. In Ullapool we got a wonderful offer from a Spanish
borrower to make authentic tapas for us, but Penny and I have
both done events where we did all the food ourselves and it is
not that much work. Tapas does not have to involve home cooking
at all it can all be bought from the supermarket I promise you
oops, what a giveaway. Many of the Spanish cookbooks in our
library stock will give you simple and quick ideas for tapas,
along with recipes for sangria I served a fruity version, with
the red wine half and half with fruit juice and lots of sliced
fruit in it very nice and folk could still stand after three
glasses, which saves having to carry them home. We made a small
entry charge which covered the cost of the refreshments.
Additional
touches would be to have Spanish music playing - live would be
wonderful, a collection of Spanish holiday photos, a list of
useful Spanish websites etc. Maybe after enough sangria,
library staff could give a display of flamenco dancing okay
that might be going a bit far! For an author event it is always
good to have signed copies of titles available for purchase,
alongside library copies to lend.
|
