Creatives in Libraries - could that kick off a Learning City?

I'm once again sitting in one of the Ōtautahi Christchurch City Libraries. It happen every now and then. They're not bad places to go, to 'be'. I'm there waiting, I'm there hoping to make productive use of my time, I'm there thinking about stuff. I'm there trying to read an article on creative cities. The literature I find usually focusses on the 'creative sector' of artists, dramatists, writers .. you get the idea. I like to imagine something much more, I like to imagine a creative city that is a'learning city', and I wrote about that here. 

I'd actually started today's session trying to 'polish' a poem I wrote, a part of a series in which I'm trying to focus on our lives under capitalism. I'll post it at the bottom of this piece in case you are interested. In doing that I spent a lot of time 'staring', thinking, imagining. It's easy to get distracted when in that state and so I noticed the people around me. There's the group of folk joining in the organised 'games' session. There are numerous parents and grandparents (at a guess) looking after pre schoolers for the afternoon. There's a succession of folk mostly of my age seeking help from library staff to find something or other.

But there's also the group of folk who look to me to be sitting lost in despair. Young people who ought to be in school, adults who are not in work, the sick, the elderly, people who (based purely on a visual judgement - yep, we can all be judgemental eh) are quite possibly living lives of poverty. They seem to carry a sense of hopelessness, of despair.

Our public libraries serve such an important role in our communities: connectors, listeners, carers, encouragers, sanctuaries, maybe even givers of hope. And the people who staff these places, people we have traditionally called 'librarians', are so important. They remind me so much of teachers too in this modern age, people from whom society now demands such a wide range of skills - knowledge specialists, communicators, listeners, carers, IT gurus.

I wonder if there is another role missing here today: maybe our libraries need trained social workers, on staff and available at all times, or... maybe ... our libraries need specially trained 'creatives' on staff. After a career in education, I think that being able to offer creative opportunities, creative encouragement and nurturing, to those who are perhaps overwhelmed with hopelessness and despair, or who are simply lonely or lost, has the potential to offer 'salvation', the potential to offer purpose and reconnection, that are not easily found elsewhere.

Sitting a couple of seats away from me is a young woman who is I suspect of school age, who appears to be restless, trying to fill her time with a phone, maybe waiting for her mates to come from school. Who knows.

As I sat silently polishing the poem, I wondered if that young woman sitting there might have a 'voice' that she'd like to use, to yell her despair at the world? Having just yesterday watched Tracey Chapman reprise 'Fast Car' at the 2024 Grammies, I wondered if sitting there two seats away might be another Tracey, or another Tusiata Avia, who has something to say to the world, if only she could find a way to realise her voice?

Perhaps what we need is a network of creatives who occupy every public library space in the city. How much new talent would we find? How many potential social problems would we head off, how many Justice dollars or social welfare dollars might we save, by giving a sense of purpose, of wholeness, to a whole new group of human beings? Yes, maybe for those under 16 they should be getting this from our schools, but these are people who for a range of reasons have already disengaged from that network. That doesn't make them worthless. That doesn't mean they ought to be consigned to the scrap heap. They still have that same human potential that we all carry.

Perhaps we could see a scheme similar to the Ministry of Education's 'Creatives in Schools' programme - now there's an idea.

And this needn't be limited to creatives. Why not a scientist exploring the natural world? Technologists ... but I get ahead of myself. What we are discussing is another potential piece of the puzzle of how we democratise learning. Those right wing libertarians amongst us would not have a bar of this, of course. Their free market ideology relies upon power imbalances, and winners and losers, despite the fact that economic theory does not say that. The model of perfect competition that lies at the heart of their thinking, for example, assumes 'Perfect Knowledge' for markets to operate efficiently.  How does that come about when we readily accept the disenfranchisement of some in society? If we were truly libertarian would we all be working to ensure that this 'perfect knowledge' was a reality? I'll switch my 'cynicism circuits' off right there.

We already see examples in which creatives inhabit library spaces. There's 'Egg Academy' that offers holiday (and other) programmes for young people, Kim's 'Creative Trust', and  Imagination Station that operates inside Tūranga. There are more, I'm just not well enough informed to list them. The first two certainly aren't available all the time, and that's what I'm wondering: what sort of social and economic impact could we have if we equipped libraries with this sort of additional talent and resource? Could we at the very least spark curiosity amongst some of our most disaffected, some of our most vulnerable, and so perhaps steer them towards the sight of their worth and their potential? I am excited about that whole idea of living in a city in which curiosity is rampant, where people want to know what, why, how, where about anything and everything in life.

This needn't be about some sort of altruistic 'do good' philosophy either, if that worries you. Every young person who fails to achieve their potential is an opportunity cost to society as in lost potential,  and possibly a direct dollar cost too. Why would we willingly accept, and in fact knowingly engineer, such things when we know the consequences, and we have alternatives?

I recently read a proposal from Dr Hafsa Ahmed, Lincoln University, and a trustee of Akō Ōtautahi - Learning City Christchurch, looking at what a learning city could look like if we think of it as a city wide learning campus? This is a grand vision, an exciting prospect, and not something that could happen overnight. But like any dream, it requires tangible first steps. What would happen if a tangible first step was to somehow fund creatives in every city library?

In the meantime, here's that poem...