Create culture:
Library Innovative Services

In 2020, the Ukrainian Library Association implements an international project called “Create Culture: Library Innovative Services”, supported by the European Union as a part of the House of Europe program. On a competitive basis, 32 librarians from Ukraine and Belarus were selected and trained by Danish and Ukrainian coaches. As a result of the workshops, each participating librarian developed and implemented a new innovative service for the development of creative industries in their library. These services are presented on the website.

Design and Beauty Studio “Creativity”

The Central City Library of Alexandria opened a design and beauty studio “Creativity”, a space for master classes and lectures dedicated to the creation of handmade and designer things.

It was decided to create the studio on the basis of the Art Living Room, which has been operating in the Library of Alexandria since 2017 and where regular master classes on various handicraft techniques are held. According to librarians, these events are now extremely popular among citizens, which stimulated the transformation of the Art Living Room into a studio of beauty and design.

“We decided to help users find new ideas and improve their knowledge in the field of beauty and design, as well as teach them to advertise their own products to make money on their sales,” – says one of the initiators of the studio Maryna Derun.

A team of the Alexandria City Library System librarians worked on creating a prototype of the service.

“Step by step we worked out a prototype, discussed which creative services are not represented in the city libraries, conducted surveys among users, made a list of necessary participants and roles, defined their tasks, and in the end came up with the necessary service prototype and a plan of its operation,” described the process Maryna Derun.

The service prototype was tested by the team during a week in 12 city libraries. In the meanwhile, librarians conducted survey of audiences of all ages, which showed that 80% of respondents are interested in master classes, and 60% would be happy to join them. Another 15% are ready to recommend studio services to their friends.

Onsite research has shown that the service is quite ready to be launched, so its concept has not changed significantly after the survey. Design and Beauty Studio “Creativity” has been up and running since September 3, 2020 and provides its services free of charge.

Project results

Maryna Derun says, “We held master classes traditionally at 15:00 in public libraries in our city inviting librarians and experts in the field of fashion and beauty. After the quarantine restrictions grew stricter, we started filming events and posting them on the official website, Youtube channel, Instagram and Facebook, where they could be viewed not only by library users, but also by anyone interested in handmade.

Statistics shows 78% of women and 22% of men watched videos of master classes. Especially many views have videos posted on Facebook, some of them gained up to 700 views.

During the work of the studio, we met creative masters who enjoy holding master classes at the studio. Since we need to deal with photography and video more now, librarians are improving their knowledge and paying close attention to working with video editors”.

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