Article supplied by Claire Friedrich, Research Associate, Lancaster University.

On the 26th of January 2023, a team of people with lived experience, staff, and researchers from Lancaster University, hosted an event at The Storey venue in Lancaster. It was designed to present the work of the Living Libraries for Mental Health (LLEs) initiative.

The event shared a key study output, which is a co-designed implementation guide for LLEs, that can be downloaded here: https://lancasteruni.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6kTuSQtGrGNnvsq. It also hosted its own LLE for mental health and ran workshop activities to get attendees to think about hosting their own LLEs.  

In LLEs, people are trained to be books and share their experiences in conversations with readers. Readers are people who want to learn about mental health to help themselves, a loved one, or they may simply be curious about mental health. Books offer a summary of their experience and then readers can ask questions; the idea is to have conversations that draw on lived experience to learn and to challenge preconceptions and the way we think. 

The all-day event started with Fi Lobban introducing the concept of LLEs, then Paul Marshall presented the results of a realist synthesis of current literature on LLEs, and Chris Lodge joined him as a book to carry out a live demonstration of a book loan. Karen Machin and Grace Collins introduced the Experience-Based Co-Design (EBCD) work that was carried out to coproduce the implementation guide. 

Thanks to four members of the EBCD group and Chris Lodge volunteering as books, we were able to host our very own LLE. Steve Jones introduced the library and rules, and attendees were invited to loan Books in small groups to experience the LLE for themselves. Feedback from attendees was very positive, with one attendee writing “Being able to read a book was emotional, educational and empowering” and others saying they would like to host an LLE. 

After lunch, discussions focused on the practicalities of hosting a library and encouraging attendees to make connections with each other. The positive feedback suggests that we might be seeing more libraries across the North West. To discuss running your own LLE, please contact us per email: lle@lancaster.ac.uk