A new technological project was launched with the aim to revive the rold of libraries among youth and children through involving the readers in nine-hour interactive broadcast beamed around the world.
The project called "A Place Free of Judgement" is a collaboration between the performance art group Blast Theory and the writer Tony White, who put together a series of events under the same title in local libraries in Worcestershire and Staffordshire last year. Groups of young people were trained over six months in presentational, audiovisual and writing skills before taking control of their local library for a broadcast to a worldwide audience via an interactive live stream.
As well as telling the story of the night, the book features a novella specially written by White called Zombies Ate My Library, which was performed live during the broadcast. It also includes contributions from viewers, who were asked to explain what their local library meant to them. The technology writer Bill Thompson wrote: “I look back now and realise that one of the reasons I believed in myself enough to apply for, and successfully get into, university – the only person in the sixth form of my comprehensive school to manage it – was because the library was my runway, and I’d built up enough momentum in my time there to become airborne.”