No sharp shushes or ‘‘finger on the lips’, community libraries reimagine reading spaces
No sharp shushes or ‘‘finger on the lips’, community libraries reimagine reading spaces
New Delhi, Books in the thousands lined up on shelves, staff making sure all is well and curious children. It’s a library alright. But instead of ‘keep silent’ boards or sharp shushes telling them to keep it down is the cheerful buzz of conversation, speak aloud stories and games aplenty.
Turning the idea of a library on its head while adhering to the core mantra of learning as fun, this one in south Delhi’s Khirki Extension is among the more than 230 across India. Connected to the Free Libraries Network , they have reimagined libraries as community spaces that encourage engagement between children through activities, stories, drama, sports, conversations, and a lot of reading.
On a recent afternoon, for instance, a group of teens in Noida’s Qissagadh Active Library were enacting Saadat Hasan Manto’s partition story “Khol Do”. A few kilometres away, a bunch of children in Tughlakabad Village’s Kitabi Dost Library were reading stories to each other, drawing shapes and choosing the next game to play.
In another part of the city, children at The Community Library Project at Khirki Extension were queuing up to play “Up, Down”, straining their ears and natural reflexes to do the opposite of “Up” or “Down” commands.
The seriousness traditionally associated with library spaces has disappeared at these “free, independent and grassroot libraries” run by young men and women, who were once early members themselves. Instead, they are focussing on learning through drama, activity and interactions with books at the centre of their education universe.
These reading spaces have been aimed at, but not limited to, young first generation readers who come from underprivileged migrant families and adults who have remained on the fringes of sanitised silent reading spaces, uncertain whether they even have the right to read.
“We really wanted to approach learning through subversive means. We call it an active library because we also wanted to subvert the idea of not talking in a library and keep it active and activity based,” Qissagadh founder Kapil Pandey told PTI.
A storyteller by passion and a designer by profession, Pandey formally started the active library in 2014.
The library, running from two centres across Delhi NCR with nearly 10,000 books, has more than 300 members, 50-60 of which are daily visitors.
Be it 17-year-old Kanchan, who wants to join the police force, or nine-year-old Satyam Kumar who wants to become a doctor, or even five-year-old Tanshu fascinated with the lions at Delhi zoo, their aspirations are many, their love for words the same.
Kanchan, who played the central character of Sakina in “Khol Do”, was quiet and reserved when she joined some years ago. Now, she takes younger children on a similar journey of discovering themselves.
“I never used to talk to anyone, couldn’t understand most of the books. Now, I can teach other children how to read and also to act,” she said.
According to Pandey, learning through drama has helped children in “thinking within the problem, instead of thinking about it”.
All the active libraries take an almost similar course when it comes to initiating new members. They are first encouraged to read aloud from books, then gradually shift to reading books of their choice, participate in activities and eventually given different roles in running the library.
At the heart of this movement is the belief in a learning system where there is no judgement.
Deepankshi, barely a year old, wobbles over to an aluminium trunk at Kitabi Dost and beats down on it furiously only to break into a gummy giggle. It is not a scene one would expect at a library, but there is no one frowning here. Other members look up from their books, amused and ready to jump in on the game of beating the trunk.
Piyali Dhar founded Kitabi Dost in 2021 to address the learning gap due to Covid-19 lockdown through activities like read alouds, quizzes, and hands-on science experiments.
“The main ideology is that upliftment can be done only by education. I believe that true learning can happen when there is no pressure, no judgement only a safe and playful environment where we read in leisure for pleasure,” she said.
“The most important change that I see in regular members is the sense of positivity that they now feel towards their future. Unnecessary aggression has dropped. They are learning about teamwork,” said Dhar, a pathologist by profession.
The members of the library are encouraged to write book reports and come up with stories of their own.
The results are tangible. Arif, 13, has stopped using cuss words at home and Ajay, 12, writes in his daily journal of the random dog he saw in the streets.
TCLP, one of the first community libraries in the national capital set up in 2014, has led by example in the wider network of libraries. With three libraries in Delhi and Gurugram, TCLP caters to a membership of over 6,000 children and adults, seven days a week, focused on justice, equality, and the right to read.
“We run a reading programme for first generation readers from ages 4-16 years. There is a collection of over 35,000 books in Hindi, English, Urdu and Bengali,” Mausam Kumari, director of TCLP, said.
To encourage reading among the members, these libraries have installed an ‘Honour Roll’, where each member gets a star for every book they read. Five stars award them a pack of biscuits; at 10, they can take home a book of their choice.
At TCLP, there are more than 2100 members who have read more than 10 books.
Across India, the FLN represents around 23,000 enrolled members, but the “catchment population”, non-enrolled members using library services and families of members, runs into an estimated 11.5 lakh.
“Member-libraries share non-financial resources - material and knowledge resources and professional and solidarity networks - with each other,” said FLN director Purnima Rao.
Each library is provided with 100 books on joining and assistance in its Books For All programme, capacity building, research and action, and visibilising isolated and struggling free libraries.
The FLN continues to grow with some new free and open libraries joining every month with a joining amount of Re 1 with an aim to create an ecosystem that upholds the constitutional right to read - “for everyone to access knowledge and information resources without facing caste, class, gender, age or disability as a barrier”.
Priya, a 20-something librarian at Qissagadh and former member of TCLP, recollects the one time a middle-aged man came through the doors. While browsing, the sound of children playing was an irritant. Instinctively, the man shushed the young crowd. “This is a library,” he said.
Yes it is, he was told. But this one is for all. If the children are not disturbed by his presence, he should also be considerate of their playful nature.
And that’s how it is in all FLN spaces.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
