Culture We engage everyone with memorable cultural experiences Alexander the Great: The Making of a Myth exhibition, St Pancras. Photo by Justine Trickett.
22 Knowledge Matters: the British Library 2023 – 2030
Knowledge Matters: the British Library 2023 – 2030 23
Through the sheer quality, scale and diversity
of its collection, the Library is a cultural
institution of global significance. Among
the many millions of precious items are
some of the world’s greatest masterpieces
of illuminated manuscript art; rare books,
including unique survivals that tell a
comprehensive history of the printed word;
significant documents, charters and letters;
the handwritten archives of authors, scientists
and composers; voices and music spanning
the history of recorded sound.
We want to share the wonder and interest
of the collection as widely as possible –
through exhibitions and displays, and a
year-round programme of creative events,
talks and performances that use our collection
as a starting-point to help us understand the
world we live in.
Since 2015 we have transformed our cultural
programme. Exhibitions have ranged from
illuminating, provocative explorations such
as Windrush: Songs in a Strange Land and
touring exhibition programme and developed
our work to loan key items, including the
popular Treasures on Tour series.
Looking ahead we are determined to deliver
a step-change in our cultural impact across
the north of England. We have a made a
special commitment to work with partners
and communities in the region to expand
our programme and at the heart of this is
an ambitious goal to establish a world-class
permanent public space in Leeds, powered
by our resources at Boston Spa. At the time
of writing, our favoured site for this ‘British
Library of the North’ is Temple Works, the
extraordinary historic flax mill building on
Leeds South Bank.
The pandemic accelerated our work to live
stream Library events to audiences from
further afield than ever. We want to further
grow the regional impact and visibility of
our cultural programme. We will work with
the LKN and other partners to ensure that our
exhibitions and events resonate across the
UK, and we aim to help build the capacity in
the sector needed to enable more collection
items to be showcased in UK libraries. We
will deliver a year-round programme of
hybrid and online-exclusive events that reach
audiences who would never otherwise have
the chance to take part.
A particular focus in recent years has been
our work with people and partners on
creative ways to engage local communities.
As we develop our physical spaces, north and
south, we will ensure that those who live and
work closest to us feel a part of the cultural
experiences we offer. In particular, we commit
that the extension to our St Pancras building,
both in its design and the programmes that
we run, will make the Library more open,
accessible and engaging than ever before
for local people.
Unfinished Business: The Fight for Women’s
Rights to acclaimed historical shows such as
Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms and Elizabeth and
Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens. Our
promise to make the Library ‘a hub of ideas,
debate, discussion, dialogue and experiment’
has been fulfilled, reaching around 50,000
people each year with a diverse programme
of on-site events, regularly enhanced by live
streaming, and partnerships with major
cultural festivals from around the world.
The Living Knowledge Network (LKN) – a
collaboration between ourselves, the National
Libraries of Scotland and Wales, and over
30 public library authorities across the UK
– has fostered a distinctive and powerful way
of delivering cultural experiences, enabling
partners to bring Library exhibitions into their
communities and expand on them through
regional collections and interpretation. The
‘local’ displays of our most successful ever
exhibition, Harry Potter: A History of Magic
reached some 750,000 people throughout
the LKN. We have also launched a new
Finally, having established new benchmarks
of quality and impact for what a major
national library exhibition can be, we will
increase our focus on innovation in our
exhibition programme, testing creative new
approaches to story-telling. This will inform
our curatorial and design thinking as we look
to create a new generation of gallery and
display spaces through our capital
development programmes.
Culture
Our priorities for 2023–2030 to
support our Culture purpose are:
• Grow our impact in the North of England
and beyond, with the goal of establishing
a new permanent public space in Leeds
• Develop our work with the Living
Knowledge Network and other partners to
provide cultural experiences, on-site and
online, for audiences across the UK
• Make our buildings and spaces more
welcoming and engaging than ever before
for the communities who live around us
• Continue to shape and deliver an innovative,
creative and inclusive exhibition programme.
Left: Jaipur Literature Festival. Photo by Marcin Nowak;
Above right: Chinese and British panel exhibition at
Liverpool Central Library, part of the Living Knowledge
Network. Photo by The Sound Agents.
Learning
We inspire
young people
and learners
of all ages
Family Day: Animal Adventures in St Pancras. Photo by Jonathon Vines.
26 Knowledge Matters: the British Library 2023 – 2030 Knowledge Matters: the British Library 2023 – 2030 27
Every library is a place of learning – a
welcoming space where anyone can embark
on their own personal journey of discovery.
Whether for school students, families or
adult learners, our learning programmes are
designed to make the Library’s collection as
accessible as possible for those who might
not otherwise easily connect with what
we do. For young people in particular, we
want to inspire the potential researchers and
innovators of the next generation, sharing
the richness and interest of the resources
we hold.
On-site activities are a vital part of this, and
we still have work to do to grow the quality
and scale of our physical learning spaces in
London and Yorkshire. Equally important
though is our learning work online, where
our curated and contextualised selections
of digitised primary sources, devised in
partnership with teachers and educators,
now reach a national and international
audience of many millions.
The Living Knowledge period has been one
of growth and consolidation for our Learning
teams. Our long-held ambition to launch
a family programme at our St Pancras site
has been realised, and families are a familiar
and welcome sight in our spaces. We built
on the continuing success of our online
Discovering Literature resource with the
launches of Discovering Children’s Literature
and Discovering Sacred Texts. Our vibrant
on-site programme was interrupted by the
pandemic, but our response was creative and
driven, as ever, by the needs of the learners
we work with. One example was the popular
‘micro-books’ project in the summer of 2020,
for which local partners such as food banks
helped us to ensure that those impacted by
digital poverty were not excluded. Other
partnerships have helped us to offer learning
opportunities to people with very specific
needs or lived experience – from Afghan and
Ukrainian refugees, to people living with a
wide range of disabilities.
As we look forward, we see important
opportunities to grow the impact of what
we do as a national centre for learning. Part
of our educational role, in common with
other libraries, has always been to help our
users – especially those who are younger or
less experienced – to develop the skills they
need to access and evaluate trustworthy
information. In a world of disinformation,
this traditional responsibility to promote
information literacy has taken on a renewed
significance, as a critical requirement for a
well-functioning civic society. We will invest
in the resources and skills to ensure that we
play a full role.
For learners of all ages, especially since the
pandemic, high-quality online resources
have become more essential than ever,
particularly for those without ready access
to other kinds of educational support. Our
Discovering series has proven the power of
well-curated collection content for learners,
and now our goal is to enhance our suite of
digital learning resources to support other
parts of the curriculum which teachers have
told us they need, including access to unique
historical documents, carefully contextualised,
which can bring history to life in new ways
and offer students fresh perspectives.
Essential as this online growth is, we know
from feedback from the learners and families
who visit us that the impact of in-person
learning experiences remains as important
than ever. We will create new on-site
learning facilities as part of our vision for
the development projects we plan to
complete in the years ahead, including
purpose-built Learning Centre spaces as
major elements of our new extension in
London and our planned new site in Leeds.
We have also made a commitment to open
up our renewed Boston Spa campus for
school and other visits, so that children and
young people from across the region can
have a memorable ‘behind the scenes’ view
of one of the world’s great libraries at work.
Learning
Our priorities for 2023–2030 to
support our Learning purpose are:
• Support people of all ages and backgrounds
to develop their skills in information literacy
• Enhance our online learning services with
new resources that support teachers and
schools, including historical documents
and other primary source material
• Make our buildings and spaces more
inclusive and engaging than ever for
learners of all ages, children and families,
and school visits.
Far left: Celebrating the Ukrainian Bookshelf Project,
Olena Zelenska, First Lady of Ukraine and Akshata
Murty, wife of the UK Prime Minister meet children
and Headteacher Inna Hryhorovych from the St Mary’s
Ukrainian School. Photo by Rory Arnold; Below left:
Women’s Inclusive Team youth group visit. Photo by
Emma Brinkhurst; Above: If Homes Had Ears Project.
Photo by Amal Malik.
International
We work with
partners around
the world
to advance
knowledge
and mutual
understanding
Endangered Archives Programme Digitisation Workshop with the EAP African Hub at the National University of Lesotho.
Photo by Jonathon Vines.
30 Knowledge Matters: the British Library 2023 – 2030
Knowledge Matters: the British Library 2023 – 2030 31
A national library is also, by its nature, an
international library – part of a global
community of unique institutions whose
combined collections could be truly said to
comprise ‘the world’s knowledge’. This is a
network in which the British Library has a
central and highly visible role to play, not
least because of the uniquely international
and multi-lingual character of the collection
we hold.
The spirit of collaboration and professional
dialogue among these national institutions is
strong. At a time of heightened uncertainty
and risk in international relations, the values
which underpin our international work –
based on exchange and the sharing of
knowledge for its own sake – have taken
on a new and sharpened significance.
Since re-stating our international purpose
in 2015 the volume and diversity of our
international activities have all flourished. Our
term as Chair of the Conference of European
National Librarians (2015–21) deepened our
alliances across the continent, providing
valuable continuity at a time of historic
change in Britain’s relationship with Europe.
Relations with partners in India have
matured, including the launch and delivery of
our ambitious Two Centuries of Indian Print
project and successful exhibitions in Delhi
and Mumbai. The British Library in China
programme brought exhibitions and events to
new audiences in Beijing, Chengdu, Shanghai
and Hong Kong. Our digitisation partnership
with the Qatar Foundation marked its 10th
anniversary, and the International Dunhuang
Project reached three decades of operations
since it first began digitising collection items
relating to the Silk Road.
In Living Knowledge we committed to
growing our engagement with those parts
of the world whose cultures and histories are
reflected most strongly in the collection.
In practice this meant Europe, South Asia,
South East Asia, East Asia and the Middle
East, in all of which we continue to deliver
significant cultural initiatives, digitisation
projects or partnership activities. These
regions will remain central to our international
work: our challenge will be to build on what
has been achieved, maintain a spirit of
innovation, and establish patterns of
engagement which are sustainable long-term.
Alongside these relationships, recent years
have seen an increased level of interest and
dialogue with a new set of partners, notably
in regions where Britain in its imperial era
played a key role, including countries in
Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas.
This has coincided with a new era of urgent
international focus on colonial histories and
increased study of the transatlantic trade
in enslaved peoples. This shift enables
us to establish reciprocal partnerships and
exchanges which will advance knowledge
and enrich understanding of key parts of
the collection. Within the Americas, we will
build on the work of the Eccles Centre for
American Studies to achieve this.
Because of its sheer scale, the Library
has always had a highly visible role in
international professional leadership and
skills development. Recent initiatives such as
our new International Library Leaders
Programme have consolidated this role and
demonstrated that interest in what we do is,
if anything, greater than ever before. Within
the limits of our resources, we will maintain
our engagement in these international
professional dialogues, whose continuation
is, at times like these of increased instability
and division, more needed than ever.
That global instability means that the
commitment we made in Living Knowledge
to support international partners who have
collections at risk has proven, sadly, to be
even more important than we had guessed
– with the dangers caused by climate change
added to the list of risks alongside war and
civil emergency. With the generous funding
support of Arcadia, the Endangered Archives
Programme will continue its vital work; and
we will, where feasible in terms of resource,
International
continue to supplement this with special
initiatives at moments of heightened
international crisis.
Our priorities for 2023–2030 to
support our International purpose are:
• Consolidate and sustain the Library’s strong
relationships across Europe, South Asia, South
East Asia, East Asia and the Middle East
• Deepen and diversify our engagement with
key partners in Africa, Caribbean and the
Americas
• Maintain our contribution to professional
dialogue, skills exchange and capacity
development across the international
library sector
• Through programmes such as the
Endangered Archives Programme, work
with institutions worldwide whose
collections are at risk from war, climate
change or civil emergency.
Below left: Page from Introductory Bengali Spelling
Book with Reading Lessons, Calcutta, 1872. Digitised
by the Two Centuries of Indian Print project to widen
access to the South Asia collections; Above: Delegates
and hosts from our International Library Leaders
Programme, July 2022.