The Vermillion Public Library was selected from a national application process for the pilot cohort for the American Library Association’s Civic Imagination Stations, generously supported by The Estée Lauder Companies WRITING CHANGE program, a new collaboration with National Youth Poet Laureate, Amanda Gorman. As part of the Civic Imagination Station pilot, a cohort of twelve libraries across the nation partnered with local artists to implement short-term arts-based interventions that engaged local residents and built traditional and digital literacies. In addition to these pilot projects, a process map will be widely disseminated to support other library staff/artist partnerships in working together to create locally appropriate and meaningful collaborative projects of their own.

The cohort of artist and library staff teams participated together in workshops and coaching led by Civic Imagination Stations Lead Artists: Willa J. Taylor, Goodman Theatre’s Walter Director of Education and Engagement; and Michael Rohd, founding Artistic Director of Sojourn Theatre and Co-founder of the Center for Performance and Civic Practice. Civic Imagination Station cohort teams developed and implemented short-term original arts-based projects and modeled processes by which other librarian/artist partnerships can work together to create locally appropriate and meaningful civic imagination projects. Vermillion’s project team was one of three artist/library staff teams chosen to present their project at the American Library Association’s LibLearnX National Conference in New Orleans January 2023.