When Ren Moore arrived in Chester to start university, one of the earliest things he did was to head straight for Storyhouse.
The 21 year old says:
I took out a library card in the first two months of being here. Storyhouse is just fantastic. It’s a breath-taking building, and I’m a proper nerd for a really nice library.
Three years on, and newly-graduated this summer, he is now a member of the library team and is busy delivering a host of reading and creative projects for visitors young and old.
But the English and psychology graduate admits that initially he had no thoughts about working in the Hunter Street building, even though early childhood dreams had included being “a violin-playing librarian engineer”.
That changed in 2020 when, a year into his degree, Ren realised a career in libraries was what he was passionate about and approached Storyhouse to join its Young Leaders programme which offers support and mentoring to gain skills, connect with others and develop knowledge of the creative industry.
It also gives practical opportunities as well as the chance to work towards a formal Arts Award.
Meeting weekly online because of the pandemic, the Young Leaders decided to organise a poetry workshop for people who live with a disability.
Ren explains:
The majority of us are disabled within the group, and so it stemmed from our experiences and what we’d want from a workshop that Storyhouse offered.
The workshop took place in January last year and attracted participants from as far afield as London.
Along with being a successful creative event it gave Ren, who was responsible for approaching poets to take part and taking minutes, the chance to hone his organisational skills.
And after gaining his Silver Arts Award, he applied for a formal job within the libraries team, with support from Young Storyhouse.
I was very clear from the start with what I wanted from the Young Leaders programme, and Kim (Curzon, Young Storyhouse Projects Officer) was really helpful with putting me in contact with Linda the library manager.
Kim also supplied a reference while Dean Ratcliffe, the Young Storyhouse officer who acts as pastoral lead, looked over Ren’s application for a library role.
They were really good with helping with the application and generally being really excited for me when I got it!
Ren was offered a 30-hour contract last summer but realised it would be impossible to juggle at that point in his final year of study. But it also spurred him into applying when another library role came up at the start of this year.
He says:
I love books and being able to work as a team that curates, houses and acts as a point of contact for the community is just fantastic.
Since joining the team in January Ren has been immersed not only in daily work in the library’s literature and classics sections but has also joined the craft teams, helping to run creative workshops for children and monthly workshops for adults.
They include a bookbinding workshop as part of this year’s Chester Literature Festival.
I said in the interview I was a bit of a creative person, but I never expected the kind of levels of opportunity there would be!
Growing up at home in Hull with a woodturner father and a mother who creates cards, Ren would visit the ScrapShack charity each month to fill a basket with objects donated by companies, and then sit in the kitchen at home and turn them into inventive artworks.
Now as an adult he also paints and does printmaking, and earlier this year had a self-portrait accepted for the annual open exhibition at Hull’s Ferens Art Gallery.
Back in Chester, one of Ren’s recent projects has been to help transform the Storytelling Room into ‘Stig’s Cave’ in celebration of Stig of the Dump which entertained audiences at Grosvenor Park over the summer.
It’s certainly a different world to libraries of the past where you were expected to just sit quietly and read.
Kids now are definitely running about the Den, but I signed up a couple the other day (for the library). They said: ‘how much does it cost?’ and I said, ‘it’s free’ and they were like ‘really? Best day EVER!’
As for ambitions for the future?
Right now, I’m happy where I’m at. I’m really happy in the teams I’m in, and with the opportunities I’ve had.
It’s a fantastic job and no day is ever the same. Except the amount of shelving that needs to be done! Books still need to be put on the shelves, that will never change.