Early spring 2021, we put together a series of online learning exchanges and individual training sessions for the participating libraries. Guided by Democratic Society (Demsoc), we started exploring together how to co-create and hand over responsibility to communities and citizens who are connected, or in some cases not yet so connected, to a public library. The libraries looked at their regional context, identified their main challenge topic and designed a series of consultations with citizens to help finetune the topic and bring forward concrete challenges.
We learnt a great deal about how to question who uses public space, and how libraries can learn how to shift decision making in their public space, outside of their ‘ownership’.