First, some background to put my perceptions from my all too brief visit to Malmö into context:
- Malmö is the third largest city in Sweden with a population of about 270,000
- It has the fastest growing population in Sweden and a young demographic profile
- 26% of the population was born in other countries
- The city has made considerable efforts to reinvent itself after the decline of traditional industries, such as shipbuilding. Nonetheless, I was interested to note that by far the largest single employer today seems to be the City of Malmö
- With the Öresund Bridge, the motorway and railway link, it now takes only 35 minutes by train from Malmö city centre to the city centre of Copenhagen, Denmark and 22 minutes to Copenhagen Airport. I think a train from Malmö to Stockholm takes about 5 hours.
After a late Sunday evening arrival, I headed straight for the main public library first thing Monday morning. I certainly experienced an architectural “wow” factor as Eva Olson, one of a number of librarians I had met previously in London, took me on a tour. The extension to the original Municipal Library (1899) is known as the Calendar of Light and on a bright autumn day it was certainly wonderfully light-filled with views out onto the adjacent park. The new building is designed by the Danish architect Henning Larsen. It opened in 1997 after he won an architectural competition in 1992.
While there was plenty to admire and I would have loved to spend longer in the building, I was told (and realised for myself later, when I had a chance to explore the centre as a tourist) that it is somewhat separate from the major flows of people in the city centre, by virtue of standing in the park. I suspect this means working twice as hard to bring many residents into the building, and particularly immigrants, some of whom may never have used a public library before.
It made me reflect on the different emphasis regarding multicultural relationships that might be adopted in different types of public library settings. Iconic buildings such as this one have the power to act as destination locations on international cultural circuits (by hosting major authors from around the world at events debating or discussing their work for example), whereas small, modest and intimate local public branch libraries cannot perform this role, although they can do the equivalent in a local context. It’s precisely these very unassuming spaces, however, that potentially have a different kind of power in community-building and inter-action, leading local people to the wealth of resources available in the librarynear their homes. The success of these smaller libraries in this task depends very much on the skills and proactive attitudes of the staff. I was interested to learn that the library service had had a temporary library in a shipping container by a skate park over the summer months which had proved to be very successful in reaching new audiences. And when I asked the head of the library service what she dreamt of doing, she talked about having a whole fleet of Bokbussen (ie mobile libraries). If I understood correctly, they already have Somali, Albanian and Arabic speakers on their mobile library.
It was appropriate then, that I spent some of the afternoon in Rosengård, an area with a population of about 22,000, east of the centre, and where about 85% have a foreign background. Of these, 59% of these are born abroad and the other 26% have parents born abroad. About 50 languages are spoken from 111 countries. The area is one of those places whose reputation goes before it…here, for example is an item I found on the BBC website.
The library here is a very important community space, in a district built as part of the 1970s “Million homes” programme (see also my entry on Stockholm). In conversation with Ewa Lindblad and Cecilia Kristiansson I learnt that the shopping complex in which it is located, has now effectively been split into two. This means that the one large supermarket to which people from outside the immediate area come in their cars, is now completely isolated, effectively giving the rest of the complex ghetto-like characteristics.
Ewa talked about her involvement in a programme called IDA (this link is in Swedish) in conjunction with the main library, an adult learning programme and resources which has evolved from a lot of contact with teachers. It aims to fill the gap for those who haven’t integrated because they have not been able to acquire a sufficient command of Swedish after completing the obligatory Swedish for immigrants’ courses. The programme will provide supplementary support for activities that the schools are not dealing with – for example how to use a computer, pay bills, fill in forms etc. Making a start with reading and learning about essential matters which are immediately relevant and appropriate to people’s lives seems to me to be the way in to introducing, in a very individualised way, the richness of the rest of what the library has to offer.
I’m conscious that I cannot describe here the many other programmes in which the library service is involved, but I will single out the Living Library activities as the idea of borrowing a person has been in action in the city on a regular basis since 2005. I haven’t yet met anyone during this trip who shares my unease that the very stereotypes that the scheme aims to tackle may in fact be reinforced by singling out one aspect of who people are in this way, but we have had some very interesting discussions about it. There is no question that everyone who has participated has been happy to do so and all sorts of positive things have come out of the inter-actions that have occurred on this 1:1 basis. Maybe we will talk more about this at this event on 24 October in London?
On Tuesday I gave a presentation to an audience of about 30 people about Welcome To Your Library. This took place in a venue where I’d been taken to for lunch the previous day when the weather was sunny and clear. This doesn’t do the views justice, but it gives some idea.
I’d very much like to go back to Malmö and if I do, I’d certainly go back to the restaurant where I was taken for supper on Monday evening. Warmest thanks to everyone I met for your welcome and hospitality…you all know who you are!
