Leading Libraries was a 30-month leadership development programme for public libraries.

The programme was generously funded by the Arts Council as part of their National Lottery Transforming Leadership programme, with additional funding and in-kind support from CILIP. 

Birmingham Leadership Institute was selected to deliver this programme. The institute is part of University of Birmingham and is at the forefront of the research and development of leadership practice. 

People who use public libraries come from all parts of the community. However, our workforce at almost every level, simply fails to reflect this diversity, when it comes to people from global majority communities, people with disabilities and women in leadership roles.

This matters in an increasingly diverse and divided society where public libraries have a key role in valuing all individuals, representing and respecting communities, and bringing people together.

Leading Libraries aimed to harness the talent of these underrepresented groups through a 30-month learning and mentoring programme which values their talents and skills.

We wanted to develop innovative, entrepreneurial library workers who will have the confidence and the vision to lead teams in tough times and who actively represent the communities they serve.

We recruited 15 library services to participate in the project and the Birmingham Leadership Institute worked with these services to:

• Provide training and mentoring development for their heads of service.
• Identify one emerging leader from each library service to receive training and to initiate, deliver and evaluate their own leadership-focused project for their service, which has local, regional or national impact.
• Select two workers in each of the 15 library services to receive mentoring from the emerging leaders as well as training.
• Develop an online course to ensure that libraries across the UK are able to access leadership development resources.

Each service committed £2,000 over the course of the programme to support the work of their emerging leader.

The following 15 library services took part in the programme:

1. Bolton
2. Buckinghamshire
3. Cambridgeshire
4. Cumbria
5. Dorset
6. Hammersmith and Fulham
7. Inspire Nottinghamshire
8. Kirklees
9. Lambeth
10. Norfolk
11. North Tyneside
12. Redbridge
13. Staffordshire
14. Surrey
15. Tower Hamlets

The libraries applied to take part and were selected for their understanding of the challenges of achieving diversity in their local environment and their commitment to drive diversity and inclusion in leadership across their entire library service.

Leading Libraries was run in partnership with CILIP. It was funded by Arts Council England as part of their National Lottery Transforming Leadership programme, with additional funding and in-kind support from CILIP.