Lessons from Community Centre Gellerup

Libraries in disadvantaged neighbourhoods
have redefined their role from
serving as ‘containers for books’ to ac-ting
as agents in community empowerment
processes. Libraries engage in a wide
range of activities from creating open
learning centres for information technology
to bridge ‘the digital divide’ to providing
homework assistance for local children
from ethnic minorities. In the process
of repositioning themselves libraries can
create empowering networks to local
welfare institutions and voluntary associations,
housing associations and citizens
and sometimes invent new organizational
forms. In shaping and adjusting their
services in response to local needs and in
close collaboration with citizens, libraries
can be seen as examples of user-driven
innovation worthy of interest way beyond
the world of librarians.
This article presents lessons from the
empowerment evaluation of the project
Community Centre Gellerup (CCG) under
Aarhus Public Libraries (Andersen and
Frandsen (eds.), 2007). The project was
initiated by a local library branch in the
disadvantaged neighbourhood of Gellerup
with the aim of developing a new type of
institution, a community centre uniting library
services, health promotion, counseling
service for ethnic minorities and
voluntary social work.

Introduction

Right now libraries are assuming a new
role as players in community development.
In an international context Chicago’s
public libraries have i.a. been
pioneers. But also in Denmark libraries
in disadvantaged neighbourhoods are
taking major steps to support enhancement
of the life situation of the local
community and ethnic minority
groups.
CCG is interesting for a variety of
reasons. First of all as an example of
user-driven innovation, where employees,
volunteers and ordinary citizens
have set themselves the task of
developing the quality of not only a
better public service, but also the
democratic inclusion of citizens and
voluntary organisations. Secondly, as a
contribution to the development of
integration and empowerment strategies
in relation to vulnerable urban
areas.

Empowerment and
local community development
Common to community empowerment
strategies in marginalised urban
areas is that one is working within a
long-term perspective (typically 5-7
years). Citizen inclusion and a holistic
and integrated orientation – typically a
combination of physical town development
and social, cultural and occupational
development projects (Andersen
et al., 2005) – are being addressed, and
CCG has been able to draw on the
collaboration between the public institutions
in the area, which has been developed
since the 1990s in the ‘Gellerup
model’. The model entails that new
employees in the area are introduced to
common basic values and to the particular
history of the area. Apart from
that, regular meetings at management
level are arranged between the institutions
(schools, day-care institutions,
social centre, crime prevention work
etc.). CCG is thus part of a broader
community empowerment strategy to
provide a lift to integration, strengthen
civic mobilisation and the capacity for
action among public employees.

The philosophy behind empowerment
strategy is that the combination of an
integrated orientation, civic inclusion
and a longer time perspective are seen
as the most effective principles for a
permanent change of the situation in
deprived local areas.
Community empowerment strategies
are deliberate strategies for the
strengthening of citizens’ involvement
and positive affiliations to the local
area. The most important methods are
appreciative inquiry and empowerment.
In the following we will be introducing
the concept of empowerment.

The empowerment concept
Empowerments are processes that
enable people to counteract powerlessness
and lack of control over their
living conditions. (Andersen and Siim,
2004).
In the 1970s Paulo Freire’s book Pedagogy
of the Oppressed introduced the
concept worldwide. Freire defined
empowerment as “learning to understand
social, political and economic
disparities and to act against these
elements of reality.”
More precisely, empowerment can be
defined as processes of mobilisation
and change, “that improve underprivileged
individuals’ and social groups’
ability to create and handle mental,
material, social, cultural and symbolic
relevant resources” (Andersen et al.
2003: 7).

Mobilisation processes in social groups
and local communities can be described
as horizontal empowerment. It is a
question of internal processes within
the area where you confront enemy
images, lack of confidence and respect
internally between various groups –
including distrust and hierarchy between
ethnic groups.
Vertical empowerment has to do with
developing the impact upwards and
outwardly in relation to important
decision-making centres outside the
local community.
Sustainable empowerment strategies
have therefore not only to do with
getting the citizens involved from
below. It is also a question of a positive
interplay between government or municipal
‘top-down’ and local ‘bottomup’
policies. Empowerment strategies
range from individual self-confidence
to the ability – at (local)community
level – to influence society’s developmental
direction over a longer period
of time.

This is by no means a truism as part of
the ‘ghetto problem’ may i.a. have
something to do with the fact that the
professionals in the area do not work
together properly (e.g. day-care institutions,
schools and crime prevention
work) and do not always see themselves
as innovators in relation to
trouble-shooting and as an important
part of local community life. Before we
take a further look at CCG we want
briefly to describe the experiences from
Chicago.

The lessons from Chicago
The public libraries in Chicago have
over the past decade turned an ominous
development into a success story.
The secret behind the success was the
exploitation of the library’s potential as
catalyst for social networks in the local
community.
A study from the Asset Based Community
Development Institute (Urban Libraries
Council 2005) also pointed to
the fact that libraries can contribute
with a wealth of resources: a ‘free’
meeting place, the most recent information
technology, knowledge, a
feeling of ownership among local citizens
as well as a relationship of trust
between people. On the basis of this
study, the following recommendations
to libraries were formulated:

1. Be investigative (outreach work).
2. Find the community leaders. A
coordinated effort to find leaders
and ‘community activists’ in the
local community makes all the difference.
3. Be visionary in relation to what the
library can do.
4. Highlight and contribute to the local
community’s unique strengths and
conditions.
5. Support local institutions and business
life.
6. Turn the library building into a local
community centre.
7. Create a local-community-orientated
culture among staff and volunteers.
8. Investments in libraries can kickstart
local community development.

The lessons from CCG

CCG is a partnership building on a
vision of – through a holistic approach
– facilitating empowerment of the citizen.
CCG endeavours to break down
institutional barriers and works towards
the fulfilment of user needs.
CCG started as a development project
in 2005. During the past two years,
employees have been focusing on
common organisation- and staff development,
which has resulted in the
adoption of a common vision, set of
values and collaboration models. In the
project period CCG has been working
on competence-, role-, and method
development, where all employees have
participated in joint courses (on appreciative
inquiry, empowerment, conflict
handling and learning) and in i.a. study
tours to other local communities.

Public service and recruiting volunteers
have also been on the agenda, as well as
the role of facilitator.
The strategy behind CCG has thus
been a combination of:
• Developing models and methods for
cross-sectorial cooperation
• Focusing on civic inclusion and civic
involvement
• Supporting local-community-based
initiatives, projects and local trade
and industry
• Contributing to creating cohesion
between the urban area of Gellerup
and the city of Aarhus.

CCG exploits the competences and
resources of different organisations and
administrations in a regular collaboration
and includes voluntary organisations,
associations and citizens as partners
in this. CCG builds on an organisational
concept of knowledge and
experience being shared, and where
collaboration goes on across professional
borderlines in order to solve
specific tasks, such as cultural activities,
information services and informal
learning sequences. This might i.a.
include language assistance, courses in
IT, homework assistance, club activities,
as well as individual, anonymous
advice on e.g. health, housing, labour
market and family matters. It might
also include advice to parents on the
parental role.

The approach in CCG to the development
of libraries as well as other institutions
and inclusion of citizens and
volunteers has been appreciative
inquiry and empowerment.
In organisational terms CCG is a collaboration
project between Gellerup
Library, Health Centre and Public Information.
These three institutions
work closely together with voluntary
organisations, associations and community
activists.

Health Centre:

The Health Centre is a collaboration
between a number of municipal corporations
and Aarhus Midwifery Centre.
Health visitors had been experiencing
encouraging results from their home
visits to families, but also for a long
time been missing a place for the parents
to visit for instruction and guidance.
When new premises had to be found,
Gellerup offered to make a corner of
the library available. The Health Centre
got a site which helped to support local
anchorage and provided the chance to
combine activities, e.g. theme days on
health-related subjects.

Public information:

Public information handles open and
anonymous advice to the citizens of
Aarhus, but primarily citizens with an
ethnic background other than Danish.
Advice is available on social and labour
market conditions, education, citizenship
and residence permit, social services,
housing allowance etc. Advice is
also offered on communication with
the authorities. Apart from that, members
of staff in Public information act
as bridge-builders and trouble shooters
between users and the system.
The anonymous advising is of great
importance to the citizens of the area.
An example: A woman approaches
Public information to talk about her
cash benefit in relation to a recently
introduced piece of legislation stipulating
that within one year one has to
have worked a minimum of 300 hours
to maintain one’s right to cash benefit.
She is advised to go to the Job corner
to look for feasible vacant jobs. The
member of staff in the Job corner helps
her to examine her resources and to
find a job. The woman then prepares
an application, which she can discuss
with the adviser. The application is sent
off, or the woman may be advised to
take direct contact to the employer. If
the woman gets the job, she can return
to Public information to learn about
the consequences in relation to her
social benefits.

When establishing CCG, focus was
centred on the development of useroriented
activities. Courses in community
comprehension and in the Danish
language have been organised. There
have been three theme days: a health
day, IT-open learning, a day on folk
high schools and continuation schools.
There have been one-off arrangements
such as ‘Break the fast’ (an evening on
Ramadan), a day on ‘Khat and clans’
arranged by young Somalis, a clean-up
day, ‘Clean Ghetto’, a concert against
deliberate fires in the area, ‘Gellerup
wake up’, debate evenings on Palestine,
presentation of candidates for the Integration
Council in Aarhus, sponsoring
of jerseys for a football tournament,
exhibition of library material on the
theme days ‘Faith meets faith’.

CCG has entered into permanent partnership
with:
• The IT-guide association, a multiethnic
association with a dual purpose:
to bring together everyone with
an interest in IT, and to make the
members’ knowledge available to
citizens without IT-literacy by way of
free courses.
• Homework Help Association
‘Tusindfryd’ under the Danish Refugee
Council, which consists of
young people offering help with
homework free-of-charge. You don’t
have to book an appointment, but
can just turn up. Homework help is
for all citizens, whether they attend a
language school, are studying to pass
the theory test for their driving license,
attend primary or secondary
school or are doing an upper secondary
course.
• The Voluntary Centre, the purpose
of which is to establish contact between
voluntary social associations
and people who wish to do voluntary
work.
• Local-historical Archive, which collects
pictures, association documents,
maps, memoirs etc.

CCG as a model

CCG is interesting for a variety of
reasons. First of all as an example of a
multi-functional local community centre
that bursts the framework of the
traditional library. It is innovative in
the sense that library service is combined
with advisory service, voluntary
work, health work and help with job
applications. CCG has here extended
the sharing of premises to also working
with the development of common
competences, better service and organisation
development in the meeting and
interplay between professionals in the
institution and in an interplay between
users, volunteers and employees.
The involvement of the professionals
has meant that the flexible networkbased,
‘ready-for action’ attitude in
relation to the local community generates
more cross-disciplinary competences.
In this connection the interplay
between staff and volunteers is also of
great importance. CCG employees
maintain that during the project period
they have become better at exploiting
each other’s specialist knowledge in
their contact with the citizens, e.g. in
relation to health, job seeking and
more extensive use of the employees’
linguistic talents. This ‘synergy advantage’
is due to two things:

1. In relation to the employees it is a
question of learning from each other
and building up common competences
to the benefit of the citizens in the local
community. Yes, but does it not create
more stress when the individual or the
team have to develop competences by
way of referring to each other, facilitating
contact to voluntary organisations
etc.?
No, not if organisation and management
prioritize joint activities for the
employees where you take stock of dayto-
day experiences. If you get better at
using each other’s various competences,
it can in fact be ‘stress reducing’,
because ‘tricky’ cases outside one’s own
field of competency can be passed on
to those who are more familiar with
such cases. In this way one avoids the
individualised ‘borderless work’, and
turns it instead into a collective, unbureaucratic
and flexible division of
2. In relation to the users, it means that
they will experience a more flexible and
coherent contact with various public
systems and with voluntary organisations.
One may contact or be referred
to another person in the Community
Centre without having to contact
another authority, make appointments
etc. This is important in areas with
many ethnic minorities and disadvantaged
citizens.

The evaluation report concluded that
in order to secure the dynamics in such
development work it is important:
• To work on organisation development
that prioritizes the social wellbeing
and collectivity of the staff and
joint competency development
• To encourage relevant further education
of the staff that supports the
development of a ‘Community Centre
professionalism’, where the keywords
are knowledge of the local
community, civic inclusion and the
interdisciplinary aspect
• To develop a strategy for staff recruitment
in the form of clarifying
which professional competences
support CCG’s targets
• To ensure creative frames for
dialogue between voluntary work
and CCG
• To develop simple evaluation and
user-satisfaction tools that can be
used internally in the organisation as
well as meeting the decision-makers’
demands for documentation of
‘value for money’.

Community Centres
and user driven innovation

CCG can be taken as an example of
user driven service design (Parker and
labour between employees.
Heapy: 2005) and user driven innovation,
which were launched in connection
with the Danish government’s
Quality Reform. The CCG concept is
therefore interesting in relation to the
discussion on routes towards democratisation,
better exploitation of
resources, and quality development of
the public sector in a close interplay
with the civic community. One of the
challenges is that public institution
budgeting and administrative processes
are not always geared to supporting
such cross-sectorial and civic- community-
inclusive innovations. There still
remain some hurdles to surmount in
order for a user driven innovation to
become part of a realistic, sustainable
development trajectory.

Perhaps the Quality Reform will pave
the way for cross-sectorial organisations
like CCG no longer being
regarded as exceptions, but as forms of
organisation that set a new standard
for holistic and user-inclusive managing
and innovation of public activities.

Further references on www.splq.info

John Andersen
professor,Roskilde University

Martin Frandsen
research assistant,
Roskilde University

Lone Hedelund
branch librarian,
Gellerup Library

Translated by Vibeke Cranfield