Borderline Books
Book Recipients
Borderline Books began in the Netherlands in 2001 and in the UK in 2006. Our books have always been given away free and that’s how we will continue. Almost all the furnishings in the BookSpace are recycled, freecycled, freegled or otherwise donated. We do our best not to create waste and use even the most battered of books to create art projects.We want to emphasize that we do not give books to the general public, but work with other organizations supporting vulnerable people. Bookshops and libraries are having a rough enough time without us cutting in on their livelihoods. We hope that once people are back on track they will join their local library again.
We have been giving free books to organizations in the North-East since 2006. Recipients include women’s refuges, care homes, local schools, organizations supporting refugees and people awaiting the results of asylum applications, carers, groups supporting people who are homeless, police custody suites, prison libraries, individual prisoners, probation, and groups supporting prison leavers and their families. We will be organising a seminar at the London Book Fair on the subject of Books in Prison: Legitimate Escape Methods. http://www.londonbookfair.co.uk/en/Sessions/54288/Books-in-Prison-Legitimate-Escape-Methods
BookSpaces
Free books - Free minds
Borderline Books UK is based in Gateshead but ready to spread far and wide. Eventually we hope to see BookSpaces all over the country so that people who need them are never far from a source of free books.
We are particularly interested in partnering with organizations supporting people leaving prison to run local BookSpaces.
The project is perfectly suited to helping people back into a work rhythm while offering the opportunity to gain office skills, shop skills, stock keeping, outreach to local organisations, interpersonal skills and more. A BookSpace can also be easily combined with a venue for literacy practice, English classes, creative writing or whatever else the people running it may wish to do. Please contact us if you are interested in starting a BookSpace.
Latest Blog Posts
Guest blog: Michael Rosen
Information, ideas and feelings. We reckon that these are vital to our lives. Let’s take them one by one. We spend hours and hours every day seeking out and using information. Just think about it: where to wait for a bus, what’s on the menu, what’s the price of milk, what’s the weather going to be like later, what are the football scores? We are sent complicated forms that ask for information about ourselves, we have to fill in forms to get what we want and need. We listen to the news and try to figure out if people are telling the truth about ‘debt’ or ‘Europe’.
Diary of a Showman
This is a letter we received recently from a guest of Her Majesty, DK. It is reproduced here with his permission. Needless to say, we sent him a big package of books. Dear Borderline, I have seen your details in the HardmanDirectory and thought that I would shoot you off a letter and see if you happened to have any dictionaries in stock at the moment. I am, well was, a showman (I grew up on the fairground) and it was not until I decided to leave the fairground that I thought about learning to read and write. ...