Description
For specialized areas, such as makerspaces, community partnerships are key to enhancing their impacts on patrons. This session focuses on strategies for developing a strong network of partners to increase educational opportunities, equipment acquisition, cultural enrichment, and mutual promotion. We will discuss how these networks can enhance libraries’ tech resources, highlighting some of the specific relationships that St. Louis Public Library’s successful collaborative digital media makerspace --Creative Experience-- has developed with non-profits, universities, public institutions, software companies, and individual artists. Creative Experience opened in St. Louis Public Library’s historic Central branch in 2013. It features facilities for individual and collaborative digital media projects, including an audio recording studio, and regularly offers free workshops and other events for adults and teens. Resources, usage, and programming have continued to grow since opening, and community partnerships have contributed greatly to this development. Honna Veerkamp is a media artist and educator and is the Creative Experience specialist at St. Louis Public Library.
Start Date
14-3-2018 10:30 AM
End Date
14-3-2018 11:30 AM
People Power: Strengthening Libraries through Community Partnerships
For specialized areas, such as makerspaces, community partnerships are key to enhancing their impacts on patrons. This session focuses on strategies for developing a strong network of partners to increase educational opportunities, equipment acquisition, cultural enrichment, and mutual promotion. We will discuss how these networks can enhance libraries’ tech resources, highlighting some of the specific relationships that St. Louis Public Library’s successful collaborative digital media makerspace --Creative Experience-- has developed with non-profits, universities, public institutions, software companies, and individual artists. Creative Experience opened in St. Louis Public Library’s historic Central branch in 2013. It features facilities for individual and collaborative digital media projects, including an audio recording studio, and regularly offers free workshops and other events for adults and teens. Resources, usage, and programming have continued to grow since opening, and community partnerships have contributed greatly to this development. Honna Veerkamp is a media artist and educator and is the Creative Experience specialist at St. Louis Public Library.