Introducing Libraries Unlimited…
Libraries Unlimited is an independent staff and community owned charity and social enterprise established in April 2016. We are responsible for running Devon’s library service as well as Fab Lab Devon, the Business and Intellectual Property Centre at Exeter Library and the Prison Library service in Devon. Libraries Unlimited strives to be a creative, entrepreneurial and digitally-driven provider of library services, and to be a thought leader in developing services that meet people’s evolving needs, piloting new approaches and ideas.
Our Change Creation Plan
We are one of six library services across England to become an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation from April 2018. We have big ambitions to develop our workforce, spaces and wider organisation so that we can maximise our NPO status in order to attract more people into our libraries. However, it also brings many challenges including taking our staff, Board, wider stakeholders (including our 44 Friends Groups) and local communities with us on our journey of change. It involves considering how we reshape our spaces and processes to create an environment that supports and embeds high-quality arts and culture activities within our core offering.
Our focus for this programme is to develop an understanding of the change we need to make as an organisation in order to become a successful, high performing NPO. This is likely to encompass staff training and development; developing our artistic vision; commissioning and working with artists and evaluating the impact of our work. We also want to understand how our status as an NPO can align more effectively with our broader service offer and learn how best to talk about our NPO work so that it feels integrated with the broader mission of the organisation.
We seek to grow our capacity whilst maintaining our distributed company culture of remote and flexible working, shared leadership and coaching. Essentially we want to grow in stability and resource, whilst holding our values firm.
Beth Reynolds
Beth is our HR Manager and has previous experience working in the legal and private healthcare sectors as well as voluntary roles in charities and schools. Successful change management is vital in HR, and Beth brings practical experience of supporting significant people changes to build on throughout this programme.
Jo Launder
Jo is Head of Service Delivery and has twenty years’ experience of working in public, academic and specialist libraries. A founder member of Libraries Unlimited’s senior management team, Jo brings experience of leading on significant organisational changes.
