The growth of enterprising community libraries
Locality has campaigned for a number of years to raise the profile of communities delivering library services, so we were delighted to convene the largest ever gathering of community libraries at the Whitechapel Idea Store earlier this week.
Back in 2010-11, we supported the first high level mapping exercise of such activities. Incredibly, the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) was only able to identify 29 community libraries operating in England – equivalent to just 1% of libraries at the time.
Our research for Arts Council England last summer indicated that that figure had grown to more than 170 or 5% by the end of July 2012 – and it is expected to top 425 (12%) over the course of the coming year. Clearly, the growth in community libraries is considered both welcome and unwelcome news – subject to one’s perspective – and the tension between those proactively seeking to manage library services and those campaigning to #savelibraries in public hands remains a significant feature of the community library landscape.
With that in mind, we organised a national networking event to inform and inspire as well as offer challenge to key policy makers and stakeholders, and we were very pleased to introduce more than 130 delegates from 35 library authorities, 40 community libraries as well as a host of established social and community enterprises (including, the excellent catering team!) on the day.
Don Foster MP kick-started proceedings and warmly welcomed the growth in community libraries right across the country. In particular, he drew attention to the government’s efforts to support communities through implementation of the community right to bid and right to challenge, together with related support and funding programmes.
Locality’s chief executive Steve Wyler emphasised that community enterprise is not about replacing the state with volunteers, but about partnership working between councils and communities, and the commissioning of library services from not-for-private-profit organisations.
He pointed to the innovative work of the team at Belsize Community Library in Camden; Fresh Horizons and its proactive call for then management of the library at the Chestnut Centre in Huddersfield; as well as the established learning and library hub that is the Alt Valley Community Trust’s ‘communiversity’. But he also cautioned that there is an urgent need to identify appropriate business models for community libraries to render them sustainable in the medium to long term – in particular, where councils have not seen fit to commission services for communities as in Buckinghamshire. And he underlined the needs for dedicated resources and support in the most deprived areas – where the resources are scarcest, the challenges are most acute, but where the value of libraries is potentially greatest.
Graham Fisher of Toynbee Hall talked about Canon Samuel Augustus Barnett and the role of the local community in establishing the original Whitechapel Library and Art Gallery – reminding attendees of the long history of community involvement in establishing such facilities. He also looked to the future, to the increasingly important role of technology in the provision of library services, and pointed to the work underway to equip community enterprises to deliver high quality services fit for the 21st century. Miranda McKearney of The Reading Agency proceeded to introduce attendees to the new national offer and its programme of work – emphasising that the new ‘mixed library economy’ will challenge her charitable organisation’s efforts to promote improvements in literacy rates. Nicky Morgan (director of libraries at Arts Council England) spoke about the Library Development Initiative and Envisioning the Libraries of the Future work, before introducing the findings of the Arts Council’s report about community libraries.
Numerous workshops after lunch explored tried and tested approaches to income generation that community libraries might adapt or adopt in taking their first entrepreneurial steps. Among them, attendees learned about IT recycling from ECO Computers in Lewisham, the co-location of community cinemas with library services, Ecomodo’s Good for Libraries offer, as well as ambitious efforts underway in Colchester to establish libraries alongside hacker and maker spaces. So far, so inspired…
Then, towards the end of the day, attendees regrouped to hear from Ed Vaizey MP, the minister for culture, communications and the creative industries. We’ll be posting short films from the event in due course, so I’m not going to attempt to summarise here what proved a constructive yet frank exchange.
Except to say – there were calls from communities for help to re-engage councils in a constructive dialogue about community library services, in particular, where independent community libraries and London boroughs are concerned; I would point to the efforts of communities in Friern Barnet and Kensal Rise in this regard, and reiterate the importance of partnership working. And, crucially, there were calls from around the country for an enterprise scheme to help render community libraries viable and capable of high quality service delivery both now and in the future. Now, I’m not sure whether our speaker really grasped the desire amongst many community libraries in the room to behave entrepreneurially, to operate as community enterprises engaging paid and professional staff, to move beyond campaigning, saving and preserving a much loved and vitally important local service – to proactively contributing to its evolution. So, there is certainly more work to be done.
Nonetheless, attendees appeared to welcome an opportunity to meet one another – to discover others ‘like them’, to share their experiences and forge formative relationships that might be of mutual benefit over the months and years ahead. If you’d also like to meet them, follow @ckhlibraries and/or sign-up to the Libraries Community Knowledge Hub
“Don Foster MP kick-started proceedings and warmly welcomed the growth in community libraries right across the country. In particular, he drew attention to the government’s efforts to support communities through implementation of the community right to bid and right to challenge, together with related support and funding programmes.”
Hang on, Don Foster MP is glad that communities are being blackmailed into running library services for the council, even though they pay taxes for the council to provide this service for them? I’ll warmly welcome Don Foster being kicked out in 2015 and replaced with a volunteer…
Community libraries are not sustainable, not desirable and in no way meet the needs of their local communities. There really is very little to be proud of here and I hope those involved in community libraries continue to pressurise their local council to ensure that they provide the service and ensure it is funded appropriately.
This whole nonsense stems from David Cameron’s “Big Society”. We should not forget that his party didn’t get a majority at the election and there is no mandate to force communities to volunteer to provide statutory services to themselves. ACE, The LGA, SCL and any other bodies in receipt of public money should not be jumping on this bandwagon as the people didn’t vote for it. We also must not be shouting about community libraries as a success, forcing communities to provide statutory services to themselves isn’t a success its morally wrong when bloated councils continue to pay their execs hundreds of thousands of pounds while slashing front line, statutory services and low paid library managers and assistants. No amount of blue sky jargon, double speak and spin about enterprise and setting communities free disguises that fact that the library service is being slashed. The ideological neo-liberal morons can keep away from my local library thank you.
This year I have had the privilege of visiting a number of community managed libraries up and down the country. Not only were they all sustainable, but without exception they were deeply valued by their community. Many are also pioneering ways to tackle local need in some of our poorest communities.
I find it strange that one would reference enterprising community libraries as ‘ideological’. In my opinion they are the complete opposite and a very real solution to a very real crisis.
I also believe people from both sides come at this argument from a common place – wanting to protect a valued service in an unprecedented economic climate that is only going to get tougher.
If we want a resilient library service, we need diversity in the way they are delivered, we need enterprise and we need innovation, because if we stand still there will not be a library service.
Of course the concept of ‘community libraries’ is ideological that’s why millions of pounds of tax payers money and several quango like ‘depts’ have grown out of the ‘localism’ agenda which is based on pure ‘ideology’.The government wants to destroy the public sector by divesting it’s services wether through outsourcing/privatisation or forcing communities at gun point to run them. It all creates a postcode lottery like two tier service, which is neither sustainable or desirable.
Anyone who’s listened at all seriously to the debates about local government finance over the last couple of years will know the pressures on all services, not just libraries, are increasing and will continue to do so. The ‘Barnet graph of doom’ is not scaremongering but an impending reality.
There are three main streams of thinking about what to do: increase public financing (raise more tax from a public that is hostile to taxation); cut costs and services; or look at ways of rethinking services that deliver an acceptable balance between more cuts and more taxes. For a local authority forced to decide between keeping libraries open and cutting social services, these dilemmas are real and must be addressed irrespective of ideology.
In that context community managed and run libraries can offer an alternative. Whether the alternatives are sustainable is, as Annemarie points out, an open question at the moment. But at least those involved are trying to find a way forward in a very difficult environment.
As a library campaigner I want to make sure that as many libraries as possible can be saved from closure. Ideally most libraries will be saved directly by their councils, but when this can’t be achieved, they need other means of support. In these cases (specifically the 5% of community libraries abandoned by their council, i.e. Kensal Rise Library) the work that Locality and Asset Transfer are doing is vital to ensure our chances for survival.
In particular the Save Kensal Rise Library campaign would like to see specific guidance from the government to councils to ensure that tools are available to protect Community Assets from party politics, local planning whims and predatory developers. We would like to see a national standard for Community Asset implementation, for example a protection from Change of Use (via planning) for Community Assets during the period they are listed. These specific actions can help us, and other communities shut out from council support, and we are very grateful that Locality is on our side.