Head of Birmingham Libraries Service Brian Gambles with the latest in a series of blogs looking at the exciting £193million Library of Birmingham project.
Last week I visited San Antonio, Texas, famously home to The Alamo (Remember?!) and now home to a significant global conference on the contribution of libraries to economic and community development.
Together with speakers from Shanghai, Medellin (Columbia) and Seoul I was the guest of the city’s mayor and the Library Foundation Board. We shared our thoughts on public libraries with various audiences including business leaders, politicians and civic leaders, library officers and, through a webinar, 72 other urban library systems across the length and breadth of the USA.
It was great to have the contribution that Birmingham has made to the development of library thinking for the 21st century recognised on a global scale.
I was interested to learn that a city like San Antonio has a very similar demographic to Birmingham, and many of the same challenges.
Back to Birmingham now, Friday was a significant day as our final bid for the coveted title of UK City of Culture 2013 was submitted.
We won’t learn the outcome till July, but the team preparing our pitch have done a fantastic job engaging support from so many different parts of our diverse community, and in crafting a really convincing bid.
The efforts don’t end here of course, the judging panel will receive a presentation from our team in June and much can yet be done to capture their attention. We all need to really believe we can win, and shout about how much our city has to offer. Let’s make the panel sit up and take notice.
Progress on the library site continues to go well, within the challenging programme, and the design for the hoardings featuring our “Faces” of the Library of Birmingham has been a hit, and certainly adds colour and interest to the Centenary Square scene.
The search for the next group of faces starts this week, and we have already had early interest with some good submissions, which we will be following up.
Our Facebook page is beginning to take off as well, as yet mostly unannounced but people are beginning to find it and vote positively for the Faces concept.
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Thanks Jez
Your comment has been passed onto Brian, who will be in touch.
Geoff
Hi Brian, interesting post about the libraries conference. I was in Medellin last week actually visiting some of the libraries in the barrios and seeing some of the work going on and how they were also a social space where musicians, predominately Hip Hop artists, hold events where they bring communities together. If you are interested, I like to talk to you some more about our trip to Medellin and some of the contacts we made. We were there to hold Unconvetion Medellin, a grass roots music event but we were taken to a number of barrios and met a number of cultural institutions.
Regards
Jez Collins