The three themes of Next Library 2027 – democracy, play & sustainability – shape the experiences throughout the festival:
Democracy
Democracy needs friction!
At Next Library 2027 we are zooming in on the friction inherent to democracy.
With global crises and polarization on the rise, libraries can play important roles as third places where communities meet across differences.
When people of different backgrounds and wildly differing opinions share the same space, the stage is set for positive democratic potential as well as friction, tension, and democratic dilemmas.
- How do we make our spaces both safe and challenging?
- How do we strengthen the social fabric of the community so that even more people feel like they belong?
- What do we do if tensions arise between user groups?
- How often do we manage to attract people with different opinions for meaningful conversations?
- Or invite those whose views we strongly oppose?
This year, we start by admitting to ourselves how tricky this is. We try to face our own feelings of insecurity, anxiety, confusion, hopelessness, or resentment. We explore the thought of friction as something uncomfortable, but crucial – and ask how we might use it as a positive force.
Instead of looking for best practice examples, this time we hunt for brave approaches, unrealized potentials and unfinished ideas – including impossible-sounding or potentially unpopular ones.
Play
When old answers no longer work, play helps us ask new questions.
In a time of uncertainty and complex challenges, play helps us explore possibilities, imagine alternatives and discover new ways forward together.
Libraries have always been places for curiosity, exploration and learning. At Next Library we want to explore how the library system can become stronger and even more relevant in the future by strengthening play.
At Next Library, play is more than games and activities. It is a mindset. Not an escape from complexity, but a way of staying with it.
We are looking forward to explore:
- Playful learning and participation
- Imagination, creativity and future thinking
- Play as community building and connection
- Play as a way of exploring complex challenges
- Play for play’s sake
Sustainability
Did we get lost in culture?
Focusing on humans; our needs, abilities and comfort accelerated our lives; consumption, technology, stress, burnout. It brought us further away from resonance with ourselves, the planet we live on and the beings we share it with. We created artificial boundaries between culture and nature in ourselves and in the world – so much that we have become astranged from the planet we live on?
How might we hold space for possible futures in which libraries play a role in reconnecting us to nature? What will that take?
How can libraries be the places that scaffold humanity in this transition, in the not yet, in the not knowing – but exploring and searching together. Decelerating society and ourselves and reintroducing all our senses as ways of knowing and connecting to nature and each other.
This Next Library we invite us all to “stay with the trouble” together.
Let’s explore, suggest, propose and immerse ourselves in the seach for reconnecting to nature and co-creating possible sustainable futures. We encourage zooming in on the smallest seed and zooming out on the planetary perspective through Sensory, tactile and hyperlocal approaches.
We are not looking for answers – we are looking for “daring to stand in the unfinished and bravely propose ways for reflection, exploration and co-creation with “more-than-human”-beings.
