BEDFORD – Ashlynne Bender and Misty Adams came before the board of works yesterday to advocate for the use of an Indiana Arts Commission Grant of $10,000 to add Little Free Art Galleries to the pre-existing Little Free Libraries around the City.
The board approved the decision, and Mayor Craig signed off on it.
Ashlynne Benders is proud to announce “This means our community will have access to, not only free books, but also free art.”
The $10,000 grant will be utilized not only to buy and craft the the new Little Free Art Gallery boxes but also will go to furnish the creation of art to be placed in the Libraries as well.
“Because we are not changing the current libraries, we will purchase the new boxes as soon as the Indiana Arts Commission Grant funds are disbursed to the City. We hope to see the first galleries being installed by September, with supporting programming beginning in October, although this is a tentative timeline.” Ashlynne Bender explained.
The $10,000 is also supplemented by another $1,000 collected by Ashlynne Bender and her colleagues to help ease the process, bringing the Grant total to $11,000.
What are Little Free Libraries?
In 2009, Todd Bol of Hudson, Wisconsin, built a model of a one room schoolhouse. It was a tribute to his mother; she was a teacher who loved to read. He filled it with books and put it on a post in his front yard. His neighbors and friends loved it, so he built several more and gave them away.
UW-Madison’s Rick Brooks (retired from Little Free Library 2014) saw Bol’s do-it-yourself project while they were discussing potential social enterprises. Together, the two saw opportunities to achieve a variety of goals for the common good.
They were inspired by community gift-sharing networks, “take a book, leave a book” collections in coffee shops and public spaces, and most especially by the philanthropist Andrew Carnegie.
Around the turn of the 20th century, Carnegie set a goal to fund the creation of 2,508 free public libraries across the English-speaking world. That goal inspired Brooks and Bol to set their own goal of surpassing 2,508 Little Free Libraries by the end 2013. They wound up exceeding that goal in August of 2012, a year and a half before their target date.
