About 30 parks, shopping centers and city streets are identified to install libraries for free and public use in order to promote the meeting of people around books.
#Librosalacalle is an initiative of the citizen group ‘Por Ibagué’, which was created with the objective of encouraging and increasing the reading index in public spaces of the musical capital of Colombia.
This pilot project consists of the installation of small libraries, built in wood and in the shape of a house, containing works of local, national and universal literature, in various languages, such as Spanish, English and French. There, audiences of all ages can explore, donate and share books freely in order to contribute to cultural development and increase the sense of belonging of Ibagu é.
“We believe that building a city is a collective task. This is a bet that we are making, and it is a giant vote of confidence, where we expect people to appropriate the project and take care of the libraries and books, ”says Greis Cifuentes, member of the Editorial Committee of the Observatory of Peace and Human Rights of the University of Tolima, and member of the collective ‘Por Ibagué’.
So far there are ten donated libraries that will be located in various parts of the city . The first one was installed this weekend in the Simón Bolívar Square, and companies and people from the region are expected to join this strategy by donating a library, which has a cost of 370,000 pesos.
ome of the selected parks are: Manuel Murillo Toro, Belén, El Mohán, La Aurora, Ferrocarril and Santa Rita.
The #Librosalacalle model was taken from the same project implemented in Australia, called ‘Street Library’, where it has been successful. Now, the people of Ibiza may have in their hands the opportunity to strengthen the citizen culture by reading and encouraging it from the smallest.
“The scope we have is very ambitious, we would like that in all the parks we could have a library. For now we have 30 very important spaces in the city, which have a constant circuit of people and are dynamic. But the dream is that all parks can have this type of libraries and that people take ownership of them, ”says Greis Cifuentes.
Who makes up the collective ‘Por Ibagué’?
It is a group of six citizens, of diverse disciplines, currents and trajectories, identified by their vision of the city, and interested in promoting social and political strategies that improve the quality of life, coexistence, development and government of Ibagué.
Visit the libraries
