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The
Meaning of A Living Library, Think Park, and Life Frame:
Connecting Fragments & Making Things Whole
The
term A
Living Library
is a metaphor. Everyone and everything on earth is part of A
Living Library
of diversity—people, birds, trees, air, and water—and
all the things we create—parks, gardens, buildings, schools,
libraries, curricula, artworks, computers, networks, businesses,
ceremonies, and communities. As such, A
Living Library
is a wholistic, conceptual and aesthetic framework and vehicle
for linking culture and technology as part of nature—a fundamentally
important systemic idea.
A
Living Library
is
also a Think
Park—an
environment meant to make us think, feel, and be more empathetic.
The term, Life
Frame
refers to our perception of life and all the elements that we
see. The
Life Frame
literally frames life so we can see it and experience it better.
Bonnie
Ora Sherk and Life
Frames, Inc.,
in conjunction with local communities, develop content-rich, themed,
indoor/outdoor community learning environments based on these
interrelated concepts. These enchanting learning environments,
with their integrated programs and processes, incorporate the
unique resources of the locale: human, ecological, economic, historic,
technological, and aesthetic. The local people—students,
parents, teachers, neighbors, businesses, and professionals from
all disciplines—form Community
Research Mentoring Teams
and are involved in all aspects of the research, planning, design,
implementation, use, maintenance, management, and electronic communications
of these places and programs.
These
site and culturally-sensitive environments with integrated interdisciplinary
project-based curricula, community programs, and products are
called Living
Libraries, Think Parks, and Life Frames.
A major goal of Life
Frames, Inc.
is to develop an electronic network of Branch
Living Libraries
around the globe, linking diversity, commonality, and customs,
using state-of-the-art technologies to demonstrate the interconnections
between biological, cultural, and technological systems.
An
exciting current example is the OMI
/ Excelsior Living Library & Think Park
that is currently being developed in the southwestern part of
San Francisco. Three schools sit on a contiguous piece of land
of about nine acres that includes a culverted hidden river and
other features—Balboa High School, James Denman Middle School,
and San Miguel Child Development Center (PreK-12). They are currently
separate campuses of typically bleak, "factory model" schools
with mostly concrete, asphalt, and chain-linked environments.
We are transforming and linking these schoolyards and the schools'
curricula by creating a series of indoor/outdoor community learning
zones that incorporate the ecological, built, and cultural milieu
of the site—past, present, and future. This becomes the beginning
core-content of the interdisciplinary project-based learning and
physical transformation process.
Every
aspect of the process of researching the site, funding, planning,
design, implementation, use, maintenance, management, and communications
is part of the project-based interdisciplinary curricula and is
being documented through a variety of digital and other technologies.
All findings and expressions are being translated into the OMI
/ Excelsior Living Library Multimedia Digital Archives,
the Living Library Website,
and will be linked live through various technologies to Branch
Living Libraries
as they emerge around the globe. There are also many other opportunities
for additional Living
Library
community-originated products and processes.
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