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.

Theater Studio “CELA”

The Vasyl Zemlyak Central City Library of the Zhytomyr ATC (amalgated territorial community) Centralized Library System has created a theater workshop that will promote the development of children’s creative abilities and help them master their professional acting skills.

According to the organizers, the name of the studio is an abbreviation that stands for “Creative Expressive Little Actors”.

“Theatrical art is a synthesis of literature, music, choreography, architecture and painting, which gives an opportunity to develop creative abilities in several areas. The service will give children an opportunity to be actors, both individually and as part of theatre performance”, says the initiator of the workshop Kateryna Babenko.

The service includes creative classes with a professional actor-teacher. They will have acting, movement and speech trainings. There are also workshops on stage performances, work with camera in various formats, etc.

“The theater studio “CELA” implements one of the main tasks of libraries – to promote books and reading. Young actors – readers of the library – recite tongue twister, fables, poems, excerpts from works of Ukrainian and world literature at literary readings”, adds the librarian.

The studio is aimed at children aged 8 to 14 and works as a paid service – its cost is 132 UAH per month (provided that classes are offline). The library claims that it may as well be implemented by other libraries that cooperate with local cultural institutions, including theaters.

Project results

Kateryna Babenko says, “After the service introduction, the library’s audience has significantly expanded, as the service attracted not only children, but also parents, grandparents, who had an opportunity to get acquainted with the library, its employees and literature represented here.

Currently, we have formed a permanent active group of participants in the theater studio “CELA”, who work with texts live.

The service feature is that it must work on an ongoing basis, improve, meet the users’ demands and needs. Therefore, we have already learned how to adapt to the challenges of modern realities and apply the experience gained during implementation of other projects.

The service introduction has helped us change the approach to the organization of library events in general, because now we are trying to understand the needs of potential audiences and design the service so that it provides valuable experience and useful knowledge to all library users”.

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