Project: Living Library for Nature Writing

Summary: 

The LIVING LIBRARY FOR NATURE WRITING (LLNW) project seeks to move beyond the notion of libraries as static buildings and collections by transforming knowledge stored here into tactile experiences, and by empowering citizens and librarians to take an active role in creating new knowledge. Libraries become living spaces that consciously respond to pressing social, cultural and ecological issues.

LLNW provides answers to the question of how libraries can become vibrant cultural venues for cross-generational civic participation, addressing one of the most important issues of our time; climate change and the loss of biodiversity.

This will be achieved by drawing on the literary tradition of Nature Writing: This genre is not merely factual observations of environments; it incorporates personal and philosophical observations upon nature by exploring and sensing in place. Nature Writing strives to find empathetic and sensory ways to record people's experiences and memories of their local biotopes and landscapes.

Sustainable Development Goals:

  • Sustainable Cities and Communities

  • Climate Action

  • Life on Land

  • Partnerships for the Goals

  • Good Health and Well-Being

  • Quality Education

  • Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure

Skills & Resources Needed:

  • Developing methodological and pedagogical skills in nature writing

  • Opportunities for funding the project: financial and hardware/tools Identifying national and international partners

  • Links to existing professional networks

  • Resources to establish toolkits (industry and organizations)

  • Marketing and promotion/social media marketing expertise for local and global networks

  • Assistance with evaluation of pilot project and implementation of best-practice models

Post-Capsule Goals:

  • Incubator Program

  • Accelerator Program

  • Private Research Program

  • Entrepreneurial Program

Project Motivation:

Since I was introduced to Robert MacFarlane in 2016 I have discovered Nature Writing as an intelligent, mindful and deeply humane method to think, feel and act on climate change. The project was born in a workshop in the winter of 2020 in the Redwood forest with Nature Writers and librarians from the North-American continent. We had sat down and thought about how libraries could become vibrant places of learning and transmitting knowledge, from the books out into the real world. The already existing infrastructure of libraries seemed too ready not to tap into.

LLNW will offer a range of holistic visual, tactile, auditory, digital, social and kinesthetic experiences for all ages and social groups and takes as its thematic, geographic, and methodological starting point with the pilot project in Kempten. One of the beauties of the project though is its scalability: it can be implemented everywhere. The smallest village library on the Indian countryside, a library bus in Kenia, a small-town library in Kansas or a central library in a capital city: these are all places where knowledge is transmitted and that can become vibrant agents for a cause that we all need to focus on.

Team Members: 

Michaela Vieser, Project Lead

Susa Pop

Annabelle Shewring

EducationGuest UserGermany