Creative Expressions In Libraries
This year CEIL will focus on the National Year of Reading and work with two of their targeted audiences: teenage boys 10-16 and disadvantaged families. National Year of Reading 2026 | Go All In
What is CEIL?
We commission creative practitioners to facilitate co-created cultural activities with local people to help develop library audiences and support libraries to be vibrant cultural hubs in communities.
We have worked with schools, colleges, and alternative provision; care homes for older people and children in care; adult learning groups and early years hubs; teenagers and refugees and asylum seekers. We’ve created mosaics and multi-sensory installations, murals and street art, BookToks and sculptures, to name but a few.
Our Creative Practitioners
We are proud to have commissioned over 50 local freelance creatives and organisations, such as artists, musicians, actors, writers, performers, creators, educators, curators and technicians. Their talent, skills and behaviours get people together to be inspired through art. Alongside their creative expertise, our practitioners bring valuable skills in engaging and supporting our communities, including workshop design and delivery, marketing and promotion, mentoring, and training. Creative Practitioners might be a freelance individual or work as part of an organisation. They have brought our ideas to fruition, and their ideas have brought our minds, spaces and places to life.
How do we work?
Our experienced Cultural Participation Workers (CPW’s) meet with library teams to explore ideas appropriate and relevant to the needs, potential and opportunities bespoke to the local area. We may also invite community connectors, volunteers and community partners to contribute to the development process extending the collaborative approach by hearing wider community voices.
Highlights and Achievements
To explore all our amazing projects please visit: https://www.cultureleicestershire.co.uk/our-projects/libraries/
Aims for the future
In our final year of CEIL, we want to continue to respond to our communities by commissioning new art forms exploring new ways for people to take part in and experience cultural activity, with an emphasis on participation, creativity, and shared exploration. We will continue to think creatively, considering performance art, digital, storytelling, and music. As in previous years, it may not be a physical outcome in the library as the emphasis is on the impact of engagement.