A real estate agent once confided in me that a bookcase in the living room saves thousands of euros in the resale value of a house. In a negative sense. This fact always does well at parties, and book lovers (my network is full of them) grudge it. On a tour of Manchester's Central Library, the head librarian proudly told us that the cafe at the revamped, much more accessible library was running so well because there were no books anywhere to be seen.
I went to Manchester and Liverpool in February to learn things. Curiosity took me, with about 20 entrepreneurs and managers from the cultural sector, to England's second city. Almost 3 million people make up the Greater Manchester Area, an urban region similar to our Rijnmond: a 'public body' ruled by Labour since time immemorial.
High altar
The Manchester library, in a 1934 concrete pantheon that, unlike Dr Who's Tardis, looks bigger on the outside than it is on the inside, thanks to a nifty trick with the dome, has been a success at least since its reopening in 2014. After a four-year renovation, 70 per cent of the building is now open to the public, instead of 30 previously. Pièce de résistance is the study room under the gigantic dome, where studies are carried out only in serene silence. The lending desk, designed like a high altar, is no longer manned. The room is wildly popular with schoolchildren, who find there the peace and quiet lacking in the rest of this hectic, post-industrial city. In times of school exams, the hall is packed.
Next to the reading room is the media library, with a practice drum kit. Heirloom of Radiohead's crashed drum technician. Once in a while, there are jam sessions.
Jewish Museum
The books have moved to the basement. No hallowed silence here but children's voices, though they remain britishly restrained. The library is a perfect playground for stressed (grand)parents, who can let their children roam freely there. Readers walk around, and there are bookshelves full of works in many of the 200 languages spoken in Manchester. The ground floor has space for pop-up shops and temporary exhibitions by municipal institutions, such as now the Jewish Museum, which is in a suburb and temporarily closed.
Visits have increased dramatically, the building is buzzing with life. Lending books is no longer the main task of the library. The Study Room is full, the pop-up culture shop is underfoot by a class of uniformed schoolchildren. In the section, reserved for entrepreneurs and start-ups, a few shabby old men are napping, behind a copy of The Guardian. Manchester has also discovered that the library should be the city's living room. It succeeded in an old building, not with new construction, as with us in Amersfoort, Groningen or Tilburg, where new construction offered unprecedented opportunities.
Manchester could no longer be proud of the library, when the concrete cathedral mainly showed its own back, and the backs of books to the population. The investment the city council made, to not only restore the building, but more importantly revitalise it, is making Mancunuians proud again of the building, which is now the backdrop of city festivals and ceremonies. It inspires.
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