Bust Your Stereotypes: Borrow A Person In The Human Library

What if instead of books you could borrow a person in a library? So you don’t browse shelves looking for a book about brain damage, but instead you get to spend time with a person who is brain damaged? And instead of a novel about teenage mums, you ‘borrow’ a young single mother to talk to? Or instead of a medical report on alcoholism, you spend time with someone who is an alcoholic?

All of these are real people you can actually ‘borrow’ in a library: the Human Library. The concept, founded in Denmark in 2000, has spread across 80 countries and is a success everywhere it goes. Its aim is to facilitate ‘open and honest conversations that can lead to greater acceptance, tolerance and social cohesion in the community’: something today’s polarised world could certainly benefit from.

“There are so many issues we are not dealing with as a society,” explains founder Ronni Abergel in this article. “Refugees, mental health, homelessness, sexuality, alcoholism, the list goes on. How often do you get to have an honest conversation with someone who is affected by such things?”

Having read this piece, I drew parallels with my work as a journalist. So often I get to meet people who others never meet. I was reminded of a series called ‘Someone I met’ where I wrote about such encounters in the hope of passing on the experience to others. But nothing beats meeting people face to face, and I can only hope the ‘Human Library’ concept continues to grow around the world.