Session

Participants and organizers will become thought partners in this session to re-imagine the library. SeeArt Foundation believes the library can be a public living room where people, especially young people, can grow while exploring and expanding their world, connecting to people, and creating. What would be the core experiences of your next library? What changes would be needed to make such libraries?

Yoonmi Eom will introduce the new library spaces, content, and experiences SeeArt is creating for children and teens in Korea. Key to the endeavor is the use of observation, data collection and analysis to understand how young people read, explore, connect, and create. Those insights become the basis of design and operation of new spaces.

Jeungmin Kim and Hyemi Shin will lead participants in capturing the moments and sounds of users in Dokk1 and will facilitate discussion to draw insights from the gathered data:

Inspiration Hunt: Participants will go out to the Dokk1 to hunt the inspiration for the verb (core experience) they found while imagining their ‘next’ library: Explore, Connect, Create, or other verbs. They will capture inspiration with pictures, sketches, sounds, etc.

Discussion: Participants, once return, form small groups around the same verb. Within the group, a pair of participants will spend 10 minutes together, sharing what they captured and discussing: Why it was inspirational, what obstacles they have been facing while creating the library as they imagined, what changes they would like to make, etc. Organizers will invite participants to share amazing inspirations, ideas, and stories they heard.

Individually and collectively, participants will re-imagine libraries with the new lens of ‘experience’ (or verbs). They will share ideas, stories, inspiration, and encouragement. After the session, organizers will ask participants to email their inspirational moments and thoughts. Participants will receive an e-booklet with everyone’s ideas.

Maximum capacity: 30 people

Hosts

Yoonmi Eom, Jeungmin Kim, Hyemi Shin & Eunjung Cho

Yoonmi Eom, Chief Strategy Officer, SeeArt Foundation.
Yoonmi creates and supports experiments to innovate libraries in Korea. Before SeeArt, she led C Program, a venture philanthropy investing in creative, play, and learning projects for children and teens. She enjoys working with people who believe in unnecessarily beautiful things.

Jeungmin Kim, Director, Contents Lab, SeeArt Foundation.
Jeungmin Kim is leading Contents Lab, where three creative spaces are operated within the context of library. She and her team observe the behavior of children and teens, collect the data, and develop insights to design the next creative spaces in libraries. She loves and believes in the power of stories.

Hyemi Shin, Director, Space Projects, SeeArt Foundation.
As Director of Space Projects, Hyemi Shin is collaborating with local governments and libraries to create innovative spaces for children and teens. Orchestrating diverse expertise, she has created five space T’s within public libraries and 23 Moya studios across the nation; she is ready to build more.

Eunjung Cho, Director, tTSome Library, SeeArt Foundation.
Eunjung heads tTSome Library, a public library SeeArt Foundation operates as a laboratory. It aspires to provide teens with a welcoming and encouraging environment and observe how they open up to new experiences and grow within the library. Eunjung is a passionate believer in Publicness.