Book Bunk Trust

Restoring Nairobi's iconic Public Libraries

Book Bunk Trust was founded in October 2017 by Wanjiru Koinange and Angela Wachuka. Our formation as an entity is inspired by a core belief that our public spaces have the potential to be steered into more than just repositories, acting as sites of knowledge production, shared experiences, cultural leadership and information exchange. We see them as sites of heritage, public art, popular memory and as critical spaces in Nairobi and Kenya's creative economy ecology. In March 2018, Book Bunk formalised a milestone partnership with the Nairobi City County government. This partnership grants the Trust the mandate to drive restoration efforts and resource mobilisation for McMillan Memorial Library on Banda street and two of its branches in Kaloleni and Makadara. As part of this agreement, Book Bunk's responsibilities include sourcing and management of fiscal and other support; steering and management of architectural restoration and management of the three public library spaces including design and delivery of programming. Our Approach: Our overall objective is to restore these public libraries into inclusive and usable spaces. To achieve our aims, we have centred our work around three pillars; 1) Research and Inventory : We began audience research in April 2017 that sought to explore how Nairobi's citizens and arts fraternity perceive and engage with the three library spaces as well as potential future programming. Our data indicates that the average user is under 35 years old and immediate desired improvements include activities for children and extended library hours. There is still little to no knowledge about the size of the collections housed in the three libraries. The staff estimated 400,000 books but a definite number and digital record is needed and hence we kicked off our inventory process in April 2019. Our team of 6 are currently focused on the newspaper archive dating back to 1906. A total of 52,000 books and objects have been catalogued so far, including newspapers dating back to 1906. 2) Programming : Audience feedback and other research highlighted above has informed the expansion of our arts programming to include storytelling, film screenings, theatre and music this year. Other additions from gathered feedback include extended operating hours for use by homework clubs. Current use is at an average of 283 users per day. We are currently partnering with artists and others to curate, present and document cultural and artistic programming that fosters citizen participation. From May-December 2019, all programming hosted at the three branches of the library is delivered in partnership with artists, writers and creative groups selected from this public call-out . 3) Architecture : We have undertaken preliminary architectural modelling and research for two of the three buildings. The restoration of Kaloleni and Makadara branches are now fully priced, with fundraising for this restoration underway. In the next year, we plan to do the same for the main branch on Banda Street, which will require a pre-set series of consultations as it is a gazetted/ protected building.