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Reflections on liberating the library through information creation: a ‘messy’ workshop at LILAC 2024

Rhian Whitehead-Wright, Vicky Grant, Tomás Rocha-Lawrence and Courtney Wood explore their “messy” workshops, held in the library at the University of Sheffield, as a means of liberating the library space and what libraries means to their users. The team delivered their own messy workshop at LILAC 2024 and reflect on their session here.  

At the University of Sheffield, Librarians, Student’s Union Officers, and students have been working collaboratively to explore the relationship between information creation and library liberation.  As part of an AHRC- RLUK Professional Practice Fellowship Project named the Creative Library (Liberate the Library) we have planned and facilitated ‘messy’ workshops in line with the liberation priorities of our students to position marginalised and silenced voices as information and knowledge creators in an attempt to disrupt academic boundary norms and knowledge hierarchies (Donovan & O’Donnell, 2013, hooks, 1994).

We have taken a participatory action research approach (Reason & Bradbury, 2008). reflecting on the potential of information creation as a process (ACRL, 2015) with the intent that such research will contribute to our ambition to make the library an inclusive site of transformative learning. Taking influence from Cook (2009) on the purpose of  ‘mess in action research’ we embrace action research as a nonlinear process and that a feeling of  ‘mess’ or discomfort might occur through this more equitable distribution of knowledge. This can feel uncomfortable, uncertain and sometimes chaotic but is at the heart of a move towards the inclusion of previously missing voices and should therefore be expected and embraced. By acknowledging, reflecting upon and ensuring we “articulate the mess”  (Cook, 2009, p.279), we can use it to our advantage as we are able to develop new and more pluralistic understandings of the world.  In doing so via this research project we hope to contribute to “a turn towards new constructions of knowing that lead to transformation in practice” (Cook, 2009, p.277)

The research project has consisted of four workshops aligning with Black History Month, Reclaim the Night, Disability History Month and LGBT+ History Month. 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.

Our session at LILAC24 aimed to showcase our ‘messy’ action research, by enabling participants to experience some of the creative activities used in the project workshops. The session followed our usual workshop structure of beginning with a ‘connecting activity’ to bring participants and facilitators together by encouraging a ‘principled’ space and a collaborative atmosphere ((LSE, 2021). We then facilitated three creative activities including fidget toy making, blackout poetry and collaging, that participants could choose between as time limitations meant we didn’t have the scope for participants to engage with all activities as they would be able to in one of our workshops. The session concluded with both facilitators and participants contributing their visions for the future of IDL through our jar of hope (Freire & Freire, 2014) .

During our Disability History Month workshop, students participated in crafting their own fidget toys using either crafting materials or 3D printed templates of fidget spinners. In doing so, they were able to engage in a deconstruction of the stigma that surrounds the usefulness of fidget toys and how this can be potentially marginalising. We provided participants at our LILAC session with the same materials to make their own fidget toys and engage with destigmatising the use of them. Participants were keen to be creative and just as we discovered in our workshops engaging in creative activity quickly facilitated collaborative discussion. This discussion between the facilitator and participants included talk about decolonisation and our aim to place students as knowledge creators. Participants shared the similar work they’ve been doing at their own institutions, or hopes they have to implement something similar. The activity also provided a space for some rewarding conversations, generating new ideas that everyone involved could take forward and develop. 

We were inspired by our Black History Month workshop collaging activity that was based on housing inequality and advocacy against racial discrimination. Our LILAC workshop focused on the broader theme of ‘Home’, providing the space for participants to conceptualise individual collages based on ‘What does home mean to you?’, ‘What aspects of home are most important to you?’, and ‘How do you relate home and belonging to your identity?’.  Collaging facilitated discussions on how people are tied to spaces, the value of place based memories, and abstract connections to tangible objects and rooms.  Participants positively engaged with themes of belonging, familial connection, and cats during this activity!

Blackout poetry was featured as part of our Reclaim The Night Workshop, calling for participants to create visual forms of activism and self-protest against patriarchal oppression utilising texts written by male authors. Creating such an unconventional medium for expression (i.e. positively defacing books in a library for the sake of liberation!) provided a unique opportunity for open feminist reflections, particularly to students who otherwise may not have had that opportunity to explore such themes through their own course material. The self-guided nature of the activity enabled participants to navigate the heavy and potentially triggering topic of gendered violence behind Reclaim The Night at their own pace of creation, in the supportive & explorative presence of like-minded peers rather than via a standard lecture-based environment.

We hope that our session at LILAC24 demonstrated the impact that both collaboration and creativity can have on establishing a joyful learning environment that helps to foster liberation. We hope that from hearing our reflections on the project and by engaging with the session we have inspired other information professionals to respond to the call for knowledge justice. From a SU officer’s perspective in particular, this project represents a wider call to information librarians to network with their student’s union’s elected representatives as a potentially powerful platform for student advocacy and empowerment, through information creation. We hope they take action to collaboratively work with their colleagues and users to liberate their spaces and disrupt knowledge hierarchies. Our dream is that together we will establish a creative and liberated future for information and digital literacy. 

You can follow the project via our Creative Library Project webpage.

References

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Cook, T . (2009) . The purpose of mess in action research: building rigour though a messy turn, Educational Action Research, 17:2, 277-291, DOI: 10 .1080/09650790902914241

Coonan, E . & Secker, J . (2011) . A new curriculum for information literacy: curriculum and supporting documents. Arcadia Project. Cambridge University Library. http://ccfil. pbworks.com/f/ANCIL_final.pdf

Donovan, C . & O’Donnell, S . (2013) . The tyranny of tradition: how information paradigms limit librarians’ teaching and student scholarship . In: Gregory, L . & Higgins, S . (eds) . Information literacy and social justice . Sacramento, CA: Library Juice Press, 121-139 .

Freire, P . (1970) . Pedagogy of the oppressed, London: Penguin .

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Reason, P . & Bradbury, H . (2008) . The SAGE handbook of action research: participative inquiry and practice . (2nd ed) . Los Angeles: SAGE .

 

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