Mediateka activates the new Txikiteka

Since the Mediateka BBK opened its doors in October 2010, the children’s space has been a reference spot. It is a space where families share and experience books, and where hundreds of children have discovered their first readings, the world of literature, as well as that of comics and videogames. Now, as part of the Mediateka evolution, this space has been redesigned to generate creativity, experimentation and child development for a public aged 0 to 12 years. Txikiland has been transformed and the collection has been moved from the shelves to the stands and to the new book tree which presides over the space, boosting the autonomy of those using it. Furthermore, it is also a flexible versatile space for studying, doing team work and carrying out cultural programming, tackled from a contemporary perspective, with activities for artistic creation, illustration, and digital culture, among others. As in the rest of the Mediateka BBK, all the necessary security measures are complied with for ensuring that the Txikiteka is a safe space.

Citizens’ laboratories, citizen innovation in the Mediateka

Mediateka BBK has begun the process of creating citizens’ laboratories to enable meeting places to experience and develop collaborative projects at the Centre. To this effect, Mediateka personnel is currently taking part in the ‘Distributed Citizens’ Laboratories. A citizen’s innovation in libraries and other cultural institutions’. This programme, in which over a thousand professionals from the Spanish State, Latin America, USA and Portugal take part, is being undertaken as part of the Librarians’ Laboratory project, in conjunction with the Ministry for Culture & Sports and Medialab Prado. This project is aimed at encouraging the confluence between libraries and citizen innovation since 2017 and fosters the idea of reinforcing the role of libraries as meeting, collective experience and creation spaces. The programme fosters the confluence between libraries and citizen innovation to promote the role of these places as meeting, experience and collaborative learning, activate sectorial and territorial collaboration and develop projects among different cities. After this first training stage and assessment of the initiative, the process of looking for projects and collaborations to drive the first citizens’ laboratories will be launched.

This project is part of the new Mediateka´s multilingual, multidisciplinary and flexible focus, as a space for creation initiatives aimed at different communities. A space which approaches the libraries of the 21st century to generate new experiences and new forms of relationship, in one of the city’s covered public places and with greater interculturality.