Libraries and Ideas
While in Brighton, I visited the Jubilee Library, which is incredible. It won the Prime Minister’s Better Building Award in 2005, and it is a wonderful building. Its third floor is a concrete platform supported on huge pillars which rise form the ground floor.
The next day, I went to the Ideas Store in Tower Hamlets - otherwise known as one of its libraries. They have been re-branded, amidst some controversy. But the transformation has been dramatic, with visits doubling in four years and the place abuzz with teenagers and young people, while still maintaining oases of library calm throughout the building. Zoinil Abidin, the manager of the Store, and a Clore Fellow, is evangelical, and one of the most inspiring people I have met. For those that have concerns, I can assure them that there were plenty of books, cleverly displayed as one would display them in a book store, with recommended and “recently borrowed” sections to help encourage people to take books out.
Brighton and Tower Hamlets are two areas showing how you can transform libraries and make them relevant for the digital age.