Bringing the Human Library to Essex
Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover
For Essex Book Festival 2019 we organised our first ever Human Library.
Human Libraries take place across the world. Just like in a real library, a visitor to the Human Library can choose a book from a range of titles. The difference is that Books are people, and Reading is a conversation. The idea behind the event is to challenge stereotypes, tackle discrimination and celebrate positive differences in our communities.
Our ambition is to host a Human Library every festival, moving around the county and working with different partners, volunteers and communities in Essex. For our first year we chose our Place weekend in Colchester. Book titles ranged from Autistic, Pan Sexual, Domestic Abuse Survivor, to Home Education, Housewife and Ordained Buddhist.
We’d like to thank all our books and those reading them. We’d also like to thank Project Coordinator Zoe Martin for all her organisational skills and patience. We’d also like to thank our funders and our 54 ‘Backers’ who supported us through crowdfunding on Spacehive – without your support we couldn’t have made this happen!
We were also honoured by a special visit on the day by Ronni Abergel, founder of the Human Library, and Katy Jon Went, Human Library UK Coordinator.
Spacehive Backers: Tracey Childs, Wendy Constance, Elizabeth Curry, Clare Derby, Peter Donaldson, Hayley Dixen, Peter Emlyn Jones, Lyn Ex, Seona Ford, Jade Fothergill, Brian Goodwin, Angelica Green, Lily Green, Ros Green, Megan Hung, Michael Jones, Tracey Lee-Newman, Syd Moore, Jo & Dave Nancarrow, Pam Nelson, Josephine O’Kane, Patrician Press, our Patron Sarah Perry, Carol Rayner, Iris sEBBA, Camilla Shestopal, Alistair Simpson, Tom Shakhil, Glynis Smy, Deborah Stephenson, Agnieszka Stuzinska, Damian Szuba, Caroline Tilley, KW, Nicola Wilson, Yolart Yola, Genevieve Yusuf from Jajaja Books, Tess Zoers-Taylor, and all the anonymous pledgers. spacehive.com/human-library
Funders: Arts Council England, Essex Cultural Diversity Project, Essex County Council
