2021-03-02

Call for Participation Special Topic: "Libraries Promote Access"

Many places in public life have become eerily quiet. We want to address this new pandemic-induced silence with ideas at re:publica 2021. We want to fill it with discussions and visions about what makes a city worth living in, how community can be experienced and shaped in the neighbourhood, and what role public institutions and public space play in all of this. Because in this interim period caused by the Corona pandemic, the view of the city and how we're living in it has changed. In times of home offices and closures of daycare facilities and schools, new demands are being raised for neighbourhoods and life in them.

With this in mind and in connection with the "Library Development Planning" that has been introduced in Berlin in recent years and together with our partner, the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe we are convinced that the role of libraries as public places deserves a special attention. We will be launching a "special call" within our Call for Participation on the topic of "Libraries Promote Access". Together with you, we want to discuss library development, digitisation and sustainability. We would like to ask you what you feel are the demands of urban society on public libraries as cultural and educational institutions in a growing metropolis. What are the issues that we urgently need to press ahead with? How and on what do public libraries and the online community want to collaborate on in Berlin and beyond Berlin's borders? Where and how can makers, creators, techies, visionaries enrich libraries with their ideas for a sustainable smart future and create community?

You use and love libraries. Maybe you develop smart concepts for libraries or work in one and have ideas for better participation and interactivity. Maybe you want to get to know the spaces of libraries first and (re)discover them as places, find tie-ins and help shape them. Send us your ideas for a participation format that brings public libraries and the re:publica community together and focuses on the future development of libraries in interaction with social and technological developments. Together we can make good use of the "meantime" to prepare for the future.

More information about this year's Call for Participation can be found in our "How To" and FAQ pages.

We can’t wait to see your ideas, projects and impulses — as well as an activating, surprising and discursive format "In The Mean Time" at re:publica in May 2021.