COURIER LIFE, DEC. 24–30, 2021 27
OUR ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO THE BOROUGH OF KINGS
BY KIRSTYN BRENDLEN
Nine community organizations
have been awarded nearly $90,000
from Brooklyn Public Library’s Incubator
Pitch Competition, and will work
alongside library staff to bring their
new programs to branches across the
borough.
The library launched BKLYN Incubator
in 2015 in a bid to increase community
input in library programming,
and have since run eight rounds of funding
and competition, awarding nearly
$400,000 and starting dozens of successful
programs from musical instrument
lending libraries to a robotics club.
More than 100 interested organizations
responded to an open call for
ideas earlier this year. Thirteen were
matched with library staff to workshop
their pitches and plans, and the nine
winning partners were named this
week, and will have a year to get their
projects up and running.
“It is a funding access model,” said
Brynna Tucker, BPL’s senior manager of
innovation. “The money isn’t redistributed,
it’s that we support, now, these programs
from A-Z. We work with the community
partners, we provide them with
training in terms of project management,
we work with our staff, who then
help them develop these programs.”
The programs are built to “expand
how the library works,” she said, but
also to build up the skills of the applicants,
whether they win or not.
Winning projects have been everything
from clear, ready-to-go programs
to rough ideas with clear potential that
need a little polishing with help from
BPL staff, Tucker said, and what’s most
important is that the project would be
mutually benefi cial to the organization
and the library and its patrons.
“Ultimately, the decision is about
what kind of ideas have the most promise,
what kind of ideas are pushing a bit
of a boundary,” she said. “In some cases,
the staff and partners who have participated
have grown just as much as the patrons
we’re serving with these ideas.”
Winning programs are sometimes
run directly by the organization who
proposed them, she said, leading workshops
and discussions. In some cases, librarians
and other BPL staff step in to
learn from the partner and run the programs
themselves. No staff are required
to step up to the plate, Tucker said, but
librarians are usually both curious and
well-qualifi ed to take the lead.
“Most people who come to librarianship
come because they want to serve
their community, and because they have
deep-seated interest in something,”
Tucker said. “They want to learn.”
Three branches in Crown Heights,
Bushwick, and New Lots will host a
series of maternal health workshops
by Birdsong Brooklyn, a pair of doulas
who support families through pregnancy,
birth, and postpartum — with a
focus on the postpartum period.
Birdsong has been operating for eight
years and already offers workshops and
classes for parents and for doulas, said
Erica Livingston, one of the founders.
When she saw the open call for the incubator
program, she was excited about
the chance to connect more closely with
the community fi rsthand.
“Right now, so much of our work is
online, and even our project that we put
through the incubator is a hybrid virtual
and in-person program,” she said.
“Sometimes being online kind of keeps
you away from connecting down into
the roots of your actual community.”
The eight other winners include Sew
Brooklyn, who are bringing sewing
machines and free sewing workshops
and materials to the Mill Basin library;
Repair Shop, who will teach basic repair
skills and provide access to tools
at the Greenpoint Library; and the Re/
Creation Collective, who, working with
BPL’s Jail and Prison Services, will
connect people incarcerated on Rikers
Island to writers and artists to workshop
their storytelling and write their
own narratives.
Growth
spurts
Brooklyn Public
Library awards
nearly $90k for
incubator program
BUILDING FUTURES: The Brooklyn Public Library’s incubator program has launched well-loved and successful classes, including a robotics
lab. Photo by Gregg Richards