Take two

I wrote a new blog a few days ago and it disappeared into some sort of black hole, so here we go again.

January was fairly quiet after a bumper Christmas in the UK. In February, however, we took 1000 books to Groningen and another 600 a week later. We are hoping that a new BookSpace will be created there and that the project will be used as a work-activity at the 12de Huis, a organization supporting drug-users.
It would be wonderful if a project could be built up to supply books to organizations in the provinces of Groningen and Friesland. Since we fist started with Borderline Books we have tried to build up contacts in Groningen as it is twinned with Newcastle upon Tyne. Now that things are up and running in Newcastle it has been wonderful to see the Groningen contacts begin to flower.

On 26 February we also took part in the Winter Festival organized by Libertas in Leiden. On Thursday 26th we were open to the public for the entire day. We had around 50 visitors, amazed that we had such a huge variety of books and that for one day only, they too could choose books for themslves. After all the effort we have put in over the past 7 years it was interesting to see that none of the visitors appeared to have heard about the project. That will change now and we hope that we may also get some new volunteers.

We had another visit from Leger des Heils (Salvation Army) in Den Haag. Their clients are always happy to spend a couple of hours browsing the bookshelves and they took a new supply of books for their drop-in centre. We are still working on a plan to cooperate on the creation of a BookSpace in Den Haag. There are probably thousands of book-hungry people in that city and we have long cherished the idea of getting something up and running there.

Next target: Nijmegen! We are planning a meeting with Rutger Kips, another of the nominees for the Ab Harrewijn prize last year, to see if we can work together to create another BookSpace on the opposite side of the country from Leiden.

Our total outflow in February was almost 2000 books. We need more months like this!

We expect to need to move from our current location in Leiden within the next few months, so it is imperative that we build up more projects around the country to make the books available to those in need. Suggestions welcome, help welcome, funds welcome.

We'll keep you posted.

Year end and New Year

This period is always busy for us. The weekend before Christmas we brought books to the St Vincent de Paul Christmas dinner for the third year in succession. This time we brought some used clothes along as well as books. In addition we took books to Crisis Skylight, Womens Aid Newcastle and WA Gateshead, North East Direct Access, the Barnardo's organisation for teenagers in Whitley Bay, The Base and in the new year also to Shelter, Newcastle. In all we gave away between 600 and 700 books during this period.

We are particularly pleased to have made a number of contacts within Shelter and hope to build on this in order to provide books for Shelter clients across the country.

The general plan for 2009 is to build on our contacts in the UK, while easing the Dutch side of the project into other hands. The contrast between the ways in which Borderline Books is received in the two countries is huge. While in the Netherlands it has taken 7 years to build up a handful of regular recipients, in the UK the project is welcomed with open arms. Very often this has led to the organisations building on that first book donation to create their own libraries.

The Borderline Books dream is that the project should be dynamic and inspiring and open doors to new ideas and creative projects.
We continue to pursue that dream.

Refugee Week in UK

What a great week; a celebration of the contribution refugees have made and are making to society in Britain. After all the bad press it is so refreshing to see articles in the Sunday Observer and other newspapers and magazines and events up and down the country - see Refugee Week.
This site lists just some of the events going on, but certainly gives an idea of the wide range of ways people find to pay respect to the refugees in their area. There are conferences, discussions groups, concerts, food tastings, films and cultural exchanges.

Borderline Books attended an afternoon in Middlesbrough held by the Hope Foundation which supports people with literacy and numeracy, computer lessons and plenty of advice and information for local asylum applicants. We took books in French and English together with posters, cards and stickers from our friends UNITED. The great thing is that the Hope Foundation decided that they want to set up a multilingual library and today was the start of that project. This is so encouraging, and the third project to which we have given books who have decided to use our donation as the basis for their own library.
There are a number of events happening in Newcastle this week. We will having an information stand at the event at the Civic Centre on Friday and the Northern Conference Against Racism on Saturday at the University of Northumberland and may get to some of the other happenings as well.
We do finally have a prototype new English flyer. Prototype in that the production was not quite up to scratch, but it was a rush job and we got a huge discount, so I suppose we shouldn't complain!

Boo Hoo

Well, we didn't win top prize today. Didn't really expect to either and the project we thought would win did win. I can't help having a twinge of disappointment though.

Still, I hope that at least we made some good contacts and that we can move ahead a bit with getting books out in Nijmegen and Leeuwarden where two of the other nominees came from. I had actually written to each one of them offering books, but all said they didn't get the mail. Don't tell me I used a dirty word in the mail and it got into the spam box! - Yes, a word like 'free' often gets me in trouble.

Femke Halsema (Green left politician who gave a speech at the prize giving) thinks it's a good project, so that's nice. One of the jury members works with Exodus (organization helping former prisoners)in Amsterdam and will remind them they can get books, so that's positive too.

Surprising lack of press. I mean just no-one except one woman doing a profile of one of the nominees.

Ah well, tomorrow's another day.
Oh lord, tomorrow, a meeting, got a whole heap of work to do tonight.

At the risk of repeating myself...

Thinking over that radio interview and the various 'portraits' made of Borderline Books in the past, I have to say that there is so much more to it than books. I have always wanted to set up small 'BookSpaces' in different towns where, with books as the one constant, a space is created for social exchange. Perhaps one would become a cafe, another would host language classes and poetry evenings - whatever the people using it at the time wanted.

Ideally (and yes I'm an incurable idealist) the initiative would be taken by the users and people would come to help each other. In the years I've been doing this I have noticed that the people with the least are the ones more likely to be looking out for books for their friends or family. Years ago we had a visit from a group of men recently released from prison and trying to get used to being on the outside. They were extremely polite. One asked me - that book is in the display, I don't suppose I could have that one... - Yes, of course you can. And then, My father's really interested in cycling, could I take a book for him? (I believe it was on the Tour de France)... and again, yes of course.

Through listening to people as they look through the books we learn so much more about what they are looking for and can lend a hand or put them in contact with other organizations who can help.

Radio Interview in NL and updates in UK

... yes we did a radio interview in Dutch - I really hate listening to myself speaking Dutch, but still it worked pretty well. The interviewer managed to cut out the worst bits. This was to make a portrait of Borderline Books for the Ab Harrewijn prize which we mentioned in an earlier post. In general I was quite happy with the interview, except that it missed the whole idea that it's more than just about giving books... through books you can get closer to people and gain their trust. Time after time I've seen people open up to me because they are talking about the subject of a book they are looking for rather than directly about their troubles. That way we can see what people need and maybe arrange other things - as we did last month with a trip to the Keukenhof flower park.
I have always felt that if Borderline Books is to be used as a work project it should be done in such a way that people discuss the books as they go along, talk about the content, talk about books they have enjoyed talk about things they have learned from books. This way any group-leader could learn so much more in such a relaxed atmosphere. Unfortunately the only time we experimented with that idea, the people we worked with had a completely different idea of how the project should be run. It seemed to be only concentrated on time-keeping and production - preparing people for 'real jobs'. In this way the experiment was a total failure from our point of view. They also put people into the project who had no feeling for books in the first place, so they were simply resisting the fact they were being put to work... none of that has anything to do with the way we planned or want to work.

Last month I was in the UK and went back to the YMCA in Sunderland. I had taken books there at Christmas and later heard that they wanted to build a library. One of the clients (and we are talking about young people from around 16-23) went to the local library and asked them to donate books, which they're going to do. They are also sending a librarian to talk to them about how to set up their library. This is absolutely brilliant!
Also when we went to Crisis Skylight again, bringing art books for the art department, we were told that the local library had agreed to give people library cards, using the Crisis address. That's a great step forward as you can't get a library card without an address in the normal way. The library is also making it possible for people to deliver their books back to Crisis instead of to the library if they find that easier. This is very enlightened thinking from that library and one I hope we can encourage in more places as we weave our way around the country.

So it does look as if we are making quite a mark in a short time in the UK and setting people to thinking about books.
Can't be bad!

I haven't written here for weeks. I was going to say that nothing much has been happening, but that wouldn't be quite accurate.
For one thing Borderline Books was instrumental in arranging a trip to the Keukenhof (bulb gardens in Lisse, NL) for a group of undocumented women in Amsterdam. In spite of a rather damp, sunless day and the fact that not a lot of the bulbs outside in the open were in flower, the greenhouses were full to bursting. Everyone had a great day - not least because some of them live in the Bijlmer which is somewhat akin to the moon when it comes to grey landscapes. Just going somewhere new where other people were taking care of all the arrangements must have been a treat in itsef. The fact that the gardens were also full of tourists, so our group did not stand out in the least was also quite comforting.

After that the London Bookfair where I met up with Judith Parke from the Literacy Trust. She is working on getting children reading and we discussed the difficulties involved when the parents don't read. I hope that in the future we will be able to work on some projects together where Borderline Books will provide free books for the parents of the children the Literacy Trust is working with. There is no shortage of good ideas, that's for sure.

This week I'm hoping to go back to the YMCA in Sunderland and see how they are progressing with the library they want to set up. I'll also go to Crisis in Newcastle and bring some more art books they have requested and refill the bookshelves for giving away. I'll probably visit one of the refugee centres as well as we have collected more stock of nappies, womens necessities, razors, soap, toothpaste etc.

More news later in the week probably - next week we've got the BLinN 'festival' where we'll be taking books in as many languages as we can muster - and also doing a radio interview for Schepper & Co, as part of the Ab Harrewijn prize publicity.