Events Calendar

Read and play with your favorite baby or toddler! Engaging with books, songs and playful experiences all help children develop communication skills, patience, empathy, and pre-reading skills and helps to build a lifelong love of reading.

Library programs are always free. Siblings and childcare groups are welcome.

Storytime for the Very Young is intended for children ages 0 to 3 years old.

Visitors of all ages are invited to come by the Bubbler Room and work with TetraPAKMAN on engaging, tactile art-making out of recycled materials. Whether we’re building a large-scale, community-generated social sculpture or creating the unthinkable through cardboard construction we need your help!

Some of his ongoing projects include painting bedsheets for a upcoming installation, creating messages out of old keyboard keys or using everyday objects like lids, boxes, and twist-ties to make larger than life sculpture forms.

Many of TetraPAKMAN’s projects scale up or down based on age and timeframe — so come by for 5 minutes, an hour, or more and we will be Doing Something. We’d love your creative additions as he works to transform the Bubbler Room at Central Library!

About the Artist: TetraPAKMAN is a Madison-based artist who has long considered concepts around conservation, and often creates using repurposed/recycled materials. TetraPAKMAN’s practice is focused on community-generated social sculpture projects. His work is about the future, and the challenges we face today as a community. He explores the role of art as a mechanism to generate awareness about the climate crisis.

READ and PLAY together with children ages 5 and under! Engaging with books, songs and playful experiences all help children develop communication skills, patience, empathy, and pre-reading skills. It also helps to build a lifelong love of reading. Library programs are always free. Siblings and childcare groups are welcome.

The Madison Writing Assistance (MWA) program offers free, one-to-one writing support for community members at library branches throughout the city. Our friendly, experienced writing coaches are happy to help with writing projects across a wide range of genres, including resumes, cover letters, application essays, grant proposals, fiction writing, memoirs, and more.

Schedule an appointment online with the link below, by phone, or in person.

MWA services are made possible through generous donations from the Evjue Foundation and UW Anonymous Fund, along with administrative and program support from the UW-Madison English Department, the UW-Madison Writing Center, and our Library and neighborhood center partners.

The Madison Writing Assistance (MWA) program offers free, one-to-one writing support for community members at library branches throughout the city. Our friendly, experienced writing coaches are happy to help with writing projects across a wide range of genres, including resumes, cover letters, application essays, grant proposals, fiction writing, memoirs, and more.

Schedule an appointment online with the link below, by phone, or in person.

MWA services are made possible through generous donations from the Evjue Foundation and UW Anonymous Fund, along with administrative and program support from the UW-Madison English Department, the UW-Madison Writing Center, and our Library and neighborhood center partners.

The Madison Writing Assistance (MWA) program offers free, one-to-one writing support for community members at library branches throughout the city. Our friendly, experienced writing coaches are happy to help with writing projects across a wide range of genres, including resumes, cover letters, application essays, grant proposals, fiction writing, memoirs, and more.

Schedule an appointment online with the link below, by phone, or in person.

MWA services are made possible through generous donations from the Evjue Foundation and UW Anonymous Fund, along with administrative and program support from the UW-Madison English Department, the UW-Madison Writing Center, and our Library and neighborhood center partners.

Join Nate from the Bubbler to learn photography and photo-editing skills using professional-grade cameras and photo-editing software. Each week, participants will take original point-and-shoot photos in the library, then edit those photos using Adobe Photoshop. 

This workshop series is for teens and tweens ages 12-18. Attend one, a few, or all sessions to learn and practice new tricks and techniques.

Join us for a special Banned Books Storytime to celebrate Banned Books Week!

Storytime will introduce families to book bans and feature picture books that have been banned at some point. 

No registration required. For children ages 7 and under. (Older siblings always welcome!) 

Join The Kids Chef, Lily Kilfoy, for a series of cooking classes for school-age kids, tweens, and their families. Participants will learn about different foods, where they come from, how to follow recipes, and how to use a variety of tools.  Registration is not required, but participation will be limited to the first 25 attendees. 

Food generously provided by Willy St. Co-op North.

Join Pinney Library's 2024 Artist-in-Resident, Phil Hassett for weekly Open Studio letterpress printing!

Most Tuesdays, 4:30-6:30 pm, May-Nov 2024

Title: Call & Response

"Taking inspiration from jazz and improvisational musical practices, this residency will use letterpress printmaking to explore many levels of interplay and collaboration between text & layout, word & image, letter & ornament, color & form, and artist & community. Over the course of the residency we will work with wood & metal type and ornaments to print at a variety of sizes—from buttons to posters, and we’ll explore layering, iterative collaboration, and ways that the rigid grids of letterpress type can be used as a foundation for both carefully planned and improvisational prints. We’ll explore the use of letters to create images and the use of ornaments to create letterforms, how communities shape words and stories and how words and stories shape communities. Along the way we’ll get a little inky, and have a lot of fun."

About Phil: 

He is a letterpress printer living in Madison, WI, where he maintains a small collection of historic printing presses and a growing collection of historic and modern printing type. A lifelong musician, he named his print studio Washboard Press because of the sound one of his presses makes, and because he enjoys doing by hand what is now more usually done in a more automated way. 

Visit his website https://www.washboardpress.com/about/