Key Points:
- All genres and styles of music, art and literature can be promoted and delivered via the Get It Loud in Libraries format
- Literacy is a key element celebrated at the heart of the project
- Passion and purpose are the keys to sustainable success
The parallel lines that apply to Get It Loud in Libraries mean whatever music you choose to showcase, the outcomes and impacts will be similarly valuable and sustainable.
Rock and pop remain the favoured genre of the target 14-25 age group. However the beauty of this project is that the principles and instructions laid out in this toolkit could be easily translated across a number of musical styles and artforms.
Your favourite genre might be jazz funk or baroque classical; you might listen to 60s crooners and nothing else and who's to say that isn't the right thing to do? If you love that style or genre with a passion you can take the principles here and make them work under a wholly new banner. You might want cocktail piano in the library, or an after hours 1940s tea dance for older library users or non-users.
This is about a specific delivery; combining the resource of space and the resource of music and offering it to the community in an original, participative, live format.
GILIL is here to stay
It's important not to treat the project as a passing trend or fad but a serious element of library service delivery; a high impact offer that nonetheless entertains.
A brief word here about lyrics. Libraries, broadly, are built on words. Song lyrics for young people are as telling and meaningful as the words of James Joyce are to an academic scholar. Quite possibly, it might be the only platform where young people can connect to words and rhyme; to stories, and through this emotional investment, are an informal aid to literacy. The pop world currently is awash with great young contemporary songwriters who are connecting to young people specifically through their craft.
The Arctic Monkeys, Lily Allen, V V Brown, Jamie T and Jack Penate are all engineering words and melody that involve their audience in direct, cutting edge storytelling. That transports them somewhere new.
Get It Loud in Libraries is the perfect platform to showcase this wealth of modern lyric writing and distil it down to one literate message for young users: Words are thrilling, and a great song can change your life. If a superb hip-hop lyric encourages a young person to pick up a pen for the first time in their life and write creatively, who can devalue the power of music in libraries to enhance life, entertain and educate?
On a similar theme, the GILIL context can seamlessly be shifted to literature; club night poetry slams and "live lit" nights where flash fiction is the featured art form are increasingly popular and allow libraries to deliver their resources with high levels of youth participation and vibrant interaction. You can unlock the lifeblood of your library resources this way and transmit an immediate, life-affirming message. Invite local writers and published poets to perform, push those boundaries, let your library breathe.
Done with passion, integrity and purpose, whatever you choose to do, it will succeed. Meanwhile, the community has sat up and taken notice, new users are crossing the threshold, and the audience is fast developing.
If your first show, for whatever reasons, doesn't attract the increased user numbers or the target audience you had envisaged, calmly disseminate the event with colleagues afterwards and identify what elements could have been improved and be determined to be better next time, but it will be your hard work, commitment and attention to detail that has laid the foundations for success.
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Photo credit: Frances Ross