Designing our Local Libraries

After discussing with some service design colleagues & agencies what I believed to be an exciting opportunity in our city it appeared on the news that evening.

There is the chance to collaboratively & creatively rethink how Bristol’s local library services are delivered.

And it is a unique, innovation sparking event we are attempting to create.

Where to begin... 

To say you are going to redesign how all public libraries deliver their service, as if one size fits all, would not only be an impracticable challenge put perhaps somewhat naive.

It was after some fantastic meetings with some key members of Bristol City Council we were told of the very interesting shift that would soon see libraries become the responsibility of the neighbourhoods department, not the leisure and culture department.

This really hit home the idea that libraries and the role they play as community hubs is becoming the responsibility of the neighbourhoods they inhabit, so their ability to support learning and entertainment deserves designers who constantly provoke action, thinking and creativity. Libraries must also meet the individual needs of each community and go further to understand what those are.

Libraries can connect to their neighbourhood by opening up and getting more people involved. We don’t know about a big society but this isn’t a service that needs be run only by the council. 

St Pauls Learning & Family Centre

So on Saturday, March 19^th 2011 at St Pauls Learning & Family Centre in Bristol we will hold a fun, free, constructive, hands-on day where people from the area, members of the council, staff and all of the relevant stakeholders can talk to each other and designers. Libraries are a service for everyone and team activity like this facilitates community collaboration.

During a structured Ideas Workshop actual Service Design methodologies will be taught by university lecturers and professionals who will act as guides, putting people on one, of many possible paths to a solution. Reaching out to the people who will use the service to help you design it has become the only way to make sure it is sustainable and desirable.

For more information please visit the project website at www.ourlocallibrary.com where you can get involved & where there is plenty still to come...

Research

The research phase is of equal importance to the success of the project as the workshop and over the next two months we will be gaining a richer insight into what it’s like to live in St Pauls, be an existing user (or customer) of the Learning & Family Centre and to be a local who has never stepped foot inside the building.

Peoples’ stories & journeys through the current service and through their community need to be uncovered.

This is something we specialise in and involves lots of time spent with people, including videos, audio, diaries, photographs interviews and observations, in order to create a holistic picture of exactly what people do, need and want (and not just what they say they want). We will study how people interact with the current services on offer through the centre and their experiences to understand all of the issues and future demands of service users.

All of our findings will then be considered, wrapped up and communicated clearly back to those present on the day. The research will also be used to inspire ideas outside of the workshop and published through the site.

St Paul’s needs are unique to the area and its people making the library services very relevant to their locations. The success of the day and ultimately the benefit of the ideas generated lie in our ability to explore the very varied groups of people that use the library. Social inclusion is vital, and as the service is for everyone all current and potential user groups need to be considered and involved. We don’t want to be stuck designing only for those present on the day, or put another way, just a snippet of society.

The public sector is very complex and vastly interconnected, with certain services being referred to as ‘slow moving monsters’.  Innovation and smart thinking now is more crucial than ever and more people need to be involved through activity like this.

We hope the process of working out what people need and who can make it happen for them, e.g. designers, members of the councils, people from the community etc. and inviting them to collaborate for a day in a fun, creative event will give members of the community the help & support to actively manage the services they need and want in the future.

This is not about intellectual property; it is about open collaboration, good ideas and getting all of the people who can make them a reality together in one room. We really hope you can join us either on the 19^th or before!

For more information please visit the project website at www.ourlocallibrary.com where there is plenty still to come...