3 essential elements to consider when creating a voice for the library: storytelling, experience, and play – Interview with Matt Finch

Community engagement is an important aspect of libraries’ success in the 21^st century.

To share some hands-on tips with you, we’ve had a chat with Matt Finch, a creative researcher working with libraries in Australia, New Zealand, Britain, and the USA to help them use storytelling with the community when creating a voice for the library.

1. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and the roles you took in your work with public libraries?

I write and make fun things for people to do in public places, but essentially, I’m a catalyst: I reduce the energy required for reactions to happen in organizations and communities of all kinds. Together we surface new ideas, build internal & external relationships, and deliver compelling, sustained community engagement.

Together we surface new ideas, build relationships, and deliver sustained #community engagement. Share on X

In public libraries, I’ve worked with a range of institutions to develop new ways of engaging the community – from local stories on coffee cups to a citywide burlesque festival, live zombie battles, time travel roleplay in the US, New Zealand, and Australia, as well as other approaches such as the Fun Palaces art-and-science movement.

2. How do you help libraries tell a story about who they are?

Storytelling is all about listening – paying close attention to each institution and its community while also asking provocative questions. You must be sensitive to those details which are the most unique and compelling. My process is close to what the writer Linn Ullmann calls “artistic listening”.

“It’s a form of artistic listening, of understanding the consequences of the decisions you’ve made. If you are lucky enough to find a voice and place, there are real consequences to those choices. Together, they limit the possibilities of what can come next—which help point the way forward. Your role, then, is to not stick to your original idea—it is to be totally faithless to your idea. Instead, be faithful to your voice and place as you discover them, as well as to the consequences of what they entail.”

In a library context, that means capturing the initial spark of inspiration, then allowing that spark to guide you, instead of trying to corral or direct it.

Storytelling in a #library means capturing the initial spark of inspiration. @DrMattFinch Share on X

For example, starting with the word “Zombies!” and then thinking what it means to allow teens to play in the world of a zombie battle – guided not by your preconceptions or goals, but what they might want to do to steer the story of that battle for themselves.

Or a great library worker like Queensland’s Jacinta Sutton pondering how to bring old collections to life and hitting on the idea of a Faceswap app that lets you put yourself into historic digitized images.

Or even a public library vision which uses qualitative research and begins with recognizing the voices and creative contributions of library workers at every rank.

3. Do libraries need to reinvent themselves? 

Libraries don’t need “reinventing” per se. I’m fascinated by the idea of the library as a place which lets you step inside a story, a world of fiction or non-fiction, and then participate in that world as you choose.

I'm fascinated by the idea of the #library as a place which lets you step inside a #story, and then participate in that world as you choose. Share on X

That means creating physical and digital spaces which are safe and well-designed, but also non-prescriptive: sandboxes, where visitors can shape what happens, even if it leads you into unpredictable circumstances.

Libraries were always about this kind of exploration and unpredictability; even old-school librarians weren’t teachers or preachers, they let you choose and read and interpret each book for yourself!

Public libraries are unlikely to develop Star Trek-style holodecks, but they are getting good at letting users determine their own experiences and letting communities decide what they want for themselves. That’s a low-fi precursor to the holodeck in my book.

The great challenge is whether 21st century librarians can make themselves comfortable in that uncertain space where the community, not the library, steers an experience.

The great challenge is whether #librarians can make themselves comfortable in the uncertain space where the #community, not the #library, steers an experience. Share on X

4. Can you tell us more about your view of the library as a creative space and the opportunities that come with a Creative-in-Residence program? 

The Creative in Residence program was a unique opportunity to range across a large and ambitious knowledge institution, working alongside many teams, spotting opportunities for innovation and change, and helping people to turn bright ideas into real projects with practical results and long-term potential.

I was blessed to be offered that role by Queensland’s Jane Cowell, but I would love to see such residencies in more institutions worldwide – and I’d like to see a wider diversity of people being offered such opportunities as well.

Innovation through listening and relationship-building is such a personal process that the experiences and perspectives you bring to the role matter very much; I have no doubt that we need a much more diverse group of people stepping into such residencies.

As for the library as a creative space… The library as a concept has always been pretty open ended and user-centric, even if institutions don’t always live up to those ideals, as Tegan Darnell points out.

I’d love to see that open-endedness translated into the realm of experience and events, something which tallies with the game design work of Raph Koster. We should create experiences which are revelatory, unpredictable, transformational for participants, and which force us to question our assumptions.

We should create #experiences which are revelatory, transformational for partic