Thanks to everyone that attended the first public meeting for the South Brooklyn Branch planning process! Held in the Estabrook Rec Center on February 29th, the event welcomed residents and library patrons from surrounding neighborhoods to begin crafting a shared vision for the branch’s future. Residents gave input into Cleveland Public Library’s Community Vision Planning process for the future of the South Brooklyn Branch—not just the building itself, but also services, programming, and surrounding neighborhood connections.
Intended to provide a more effective and engaging experience than typical public meetings, the event offered attendees a variety of feedback formats. The meeting began with a short presentation of the vision planning process from the CUDC‘s Kristen Zeiber. For those unable to attend the public meeting or attendees that want to review the intro presentation, the slides shown at the public meeting are posted below:
Following the intro presentation, audience members moved on to four engagement stations carefully designed and installed throughout the gym space. Attendees were free to visit the engagement stations at their own pace. Walking and chatting with neighbors between stations, attendees shared important insights with the planning team through written text, group conversations, and electronic clickers. Each of the four stations were marked with bold graphics and clear instructions:
- Station 1: Discovering Options Libraries are changing fast in response to digital information. How can the South Brooklyn Branch continue to offer innovative services? Take a seat and grab a “clicker” for a short interactive presentation.
- Station 2: Defining the Vision Our Advisory Committee defined the vision for the South Brooklyn Branch as “open,” “interesting,” and “reflective.” What do these words mean to you? Add post-it notes to each category to help guide the vision for library services, facilities, and neighborhood.
- Station 3: Branch(ing) Conversations What’s working? What’s not? How can the South Brooklyn Branch become its best in the future? Have a seat to discuss the South Brooklyn Branch’s current strengths, weaknesses, & opportunities in a 20-minute small group discussion.
- Station 4: Survey Your feedback is crucial to our next steps, so pull up a chair and let us know what you think about the future of the South Brooklyn Branch and the larger CPL. Fill out our paper survey, available in English or Spanish.
- Children’s Area For budding community members, a children’s area was provided with coloring book pages of the South Brooklyn Branch building for young minds to share their design ideas.
One of the engagement stations provided printed surveys for attendees for fill-out, written in both English and Spanish. The survey is now available online, so please take a few minutes to complete the survey, if you haven’t done so already, and share the survey link with your friends and neighbors.
Online survey link: www.surveymonkey.com/s/CPL150
Please keep an eye on the CPL150.org website for an announcement of the second South Brooklyn public meeting, planned within the next couple months.
Thank you!
