Harry Potter Week Online Celebration!
Helmet libraries celebrated what is traditionally Harry Potter Day as an entire week from February 1st – 6th, 2021. Due to the coronavirus situation, the entire week’s celebrations took place on-line. The events were held in Finnish, Swedish, Russian and English.
In anticipation of Harry Potter Week many different kinds of contests and competitions were held at the beginning of the year involving magic spells, stories and drawings. Our magic spell competition received 83 submissions. Some of the spells were tried out in a YouTube video that has received over 377 views. The short story competition’s theme this year was “A Day at Diagon Alley” and almost 90 submissions were entered, all from different age groups. HelMet libraries selected 10 finalists in two age groups. These finalists were then voted on 4084 times by the public. The drawing competition received over 180 submissions and the finalists received 2075 votes from public voting.
83 magic potion recipes were also submitted to HelMet Libraries and some of these were tested by librarians in a YouTube video that has since been viewed over 800 times. In the video the magic potions recipes are tested and the effects that the potions cause. The video is available on Vantaa City Libraries YouTube channel (Vantaan kaupunginkirjasto).
In addition to these events, Harry Potter week included magical cooking in the kitchen, magic potion mixing, identifying magical devices, a young adult LGBT+ fantasy book talk, Sybill Trelawney’s fortunes and a Flourish & Blotts drawing game. The videos were available the entire week on HelMet libraries’ YouTube channels and in Instagram. The videos received altogether 4847 views over the week.
During the week it was also possible to play a Harry Potter themed Seppo.io game. The game was released in Finnish, Swedish, English and Russian. Over the whole week the game was played over 4000 times, all in different languages. The game is still available for play, more info here.
Harry Potter Day’s traditional trivia competition was held on-line this year. The competition included 234 teams of which 6 groups received full points. Of these, three winners were selected. 502 students from schools around Helsinki, Espoo and Vantaa also joined in on their own Harry Potter trivia contests.
The most watched video of the week was Wizards Whisks – Magical Cooking Show, Part 1 (Velhon vispilät - Maaginen kokkaustuokio, osa 1), in which library witches cooked up some Witch’s Cauldron Cupcakes. The video was in Finnish. The video has been viewed over 1164 times.
You can find all the Harry Potter Week event’s videos in Finnish and Swedish at Vantaa City Library’s YouTube channel (Vantaan kaupunginkirjasto) as well as HelMet’s YouTube channel (HelMetkirjasto). The official Harry Potter Day has been moved by request of the publisher to June 2021, when you can look forward to even more magic spells and potions.