The Creative Library is a collaborative project between the Students' Union Liberation Officers and the University Library at the University of Sheffield. We are co-producing, co-delivering and co-evaluating a series of library based creative workshops to explore the relationship between student creativity and library liberation.
Our workshops involve a range of creative methods, including collage, poetry, stitch-craft, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, life and creative writing, music, zines and podcasts. The workshops align with liberation priorities of our students and have been organised to coincide with Black History Month, Disability History Month, Reclaim the Night and LGBT+ History Month. Our study is reflecting on the liberating potential of information creation and we are adopting a pedagogy of joyful hope to enable our ambition to make the library an inclusive site of transformative learning. Our reflections are looking at the relationship between creativity, liberation and transformative learning.
Based at the University of Sheffield, UK and working in partnership with IATUL, the International Association of University Libraries, our project is funded through the AHRC-RLUK Professional Practice Fellowship Scheme with additional grant funding from the Participatory Research Network and IATUL. Vicky Grant, Head of Library Learning and Teaching, has been appointed as an AHRC-RLUK Fellow to lead this work. Find out more from the project website.