The library with no quiet zone

After a final year project at UWE showed Tess Sieling just how much public libraries were struggling to make the public aware of the services they offer, the Bristol-based designer decided to do something about it.

“I thought by taking the library to the public and interrupting people’s routines in everyday places – parks, the city centre – it was a good way to talk to people about their relationship with their library and encourage them to use their local library more,” Tess explains. “The librarians basically told me that they need to be used or they will be lost.”

While taking her own small library of books out into Bristol’s public spaces and starting conversations about reading and using libraries, Tess also began to document some of the stories people were telling her about their own lives and experiences. “That’s the part I enjoyed the most – engaging someone and encouraging them to borrow a book, and then suggesting that they tell a story in return,” she says. “You get some really spontaneous stories that people just remember.”

Children and their parents are encouraged to add their stories to the library

Tess continued to develop the model of storytelling in exchange for a book, including with young children at music festival WOMAD in the summer of 2017. But it was hearing about the work of psychologist James Pennebaker, and later studies at the University of Nottingham, that convinced Tess her work was not only good but important. In one study, participants who wrote expressively about past traumatic experiences were six times more likely to heal from a wound in within ten days than a control group.

“I thought it was amazing and people needed to know about it. It’s the sort of thing that you know intuitively – that it’s good to talk about things or write them down – but that there’s a physical response to boost your immune system as well as an emotional response is absolutely amazing. So now, if you want to borrow a book from the Loud Library, you have to tell a story as an exchange.”

Since then, dozens of stories from people around Bristol have been recorded by the team, on subjects as diverse as ‘silence’, ‘food’, ‘night-time’ and ‘injury’. These prompts help people to think of an anecdote they wish to share. “It is quite a hard and scary thing – if you’re stopped in the middle of the street and asked to tell a story you don’t know where to start,” Tess admits. The cue cards really help with this mental block: “Everyone has a food anecdote!”

https://www.instagram.com/p/BhEsKK9BfEo/?taken-by=the_loudlibrary

Through the project, Tess has also come to realise the affects her efforts can have on the local community as a whole. After contacting the Bedminster Business Improvement District, the Ebenezer Pocket Park on North Street became a special spot for her scheme. Full of wooden benches and originally designed for storytelling, the space has become a hub for Tess’s story exchanges with families.

Now, Tess is looking to collate all of the captivating Loud Library stories into a book that could be taken into even more communities. “I want to be able to have some fun with the stories and take them into hospitals and old people’s homes to brighten up people’s day a little bit. I think it definitely has that potential, and ultimately, I want to improve community wellbeing.”

As summer 2018 rolls in, Tess will be back on her bike and ready to uncover even more of the public’s imagination, encouraging not only an interest in public libraries, but bringing about a community-led movement towards a more expressive society.

Find the Loud Library, in collaboration with Bucks Quizz, in Queen Square on May 20. To hear the stories, visit www.tess-sieling.co. uk/#/the-loud-archive and to find out where to find the library over the summer, visit www.facebook.com/theloudlibrary