by Zach Miller
Quick Summary
The Hopkins Branch of Hennepin County Library has enjoyed three years of success engaging with new patrons during the Hopkins Pride Festival. Their events have included gender identity-empowering clothing swaps and, this year, a class on Gender Affirming Makeup.
Text courtesy of Hopkins Library staff Margaret Breen and Cat Morris.
In 2023, the library tabled at the City of Hopkins local Pride Festival. Hopkins Pride was enthusiastically attended, and the library was able to interact with a lot of new patrons. As an effort to extend that interaction in 2024, we hosted a program in the library that both meets a community need (clothing that empowers patrons gender identity) and incentivizes people to come and visit the library during the festival. The Clothing Swap was an entirely free program and required minimal staff time. This program was a huge success. It was a highest attended adult program in 2024 and deepened the connection between Pride festival participants and the library.
During the 2024 Clothing Swap, participants were exchanging advice on how to apply makeup to affirm your gender identity. In response to this demonstrated interest in the topic, this year we hired a makeup artist to come in and teach a class on Gender Affirming Makeup. The makeup program was full of folks either new to makeup or wanting to expand their knowledge of makeup application for both masc and femme looks. We contracted a makeup artist from the LGBTQIA community. Participants loved the hands-on help and one-on-one support. In addition to the instructor, there was only one staff member needed during the program along. The instructor had makeup to share, and asked attendees to bring what they had at home to personalize their looks.
Both programs were filled with joy, affirmation, and connection. We wanted to share this program success to spark ideas for programs that might be a good fit for your library. If you have more questions about these programs, we’d love to hear from you! Please feel free to contact us at mbreen@hclib.org and cmorris@hclib.org.