book stations & the arts, examples:
Sound City, Playcove & Dreamrivers
Towns focussing on music, theatre and movies
You can read more about these town ideas on the project’s website: towns and cities international (TaCI).
The arts
A book station will always root itself in the community. If this community is in Sound City, a city that is all about sound and music, then this book station will be an expert in sheet music prints and probably host a music studio at the station, which could also be used to record audiobooks.
If a community is in Playcove, a cradle for the theatre world, then the local book station will provide all the prints needed for rehearsals, and very likely host a theatre at the station. The book station’s library would have an extensive collection of plays from around the world, and playwrights could have a writing studio at the book station.
If a community is in Dreamrivers, home to the dreams caught on camera, then the local book station will print all scripts, schedules, post-its, and very likely serve as one of the movie sets in town. And again writers would find a quiet corner or two at the book station.
Maybe these book stations would have a Writers Garden, a garden with desks, little pavilions for rainy days, and a shed with paper, pens and food. (Food tends to be ignored by some writers, but that doesn’t mean they don’t need it. So providing a well filled fridge is a real treat.)
Book stations have a natural affiliation with the arts:
- Each book station is a work of art
- Each book station cooperates with local artists
- Larger book stations provide spaces and events for local artists
- and if a town focuses on a specific art, a book station can mirror that focus to some extent.
In arts towns a book stations could be in a clearly defined space, or parts of the book station could be integrated into different parts of the town. In the second case, it might be interesting to physically connect the different parts of the book station, e.g. via bridges or slides, via dedicated paths or via waterways.
For example: Sound City could have a Reading Garden in its pianissimo area, and a path could lead from there to one of the tutti areas, where all sorts of workshops hammer and clang together, among them the book workshops. And the book workshops could be connected via an underground tunnel with the papermakers in the rustle area. The bespoke book workshops would of course be in the jazz part of town, with the craftspeople tapping their feet to the music. How to best get there is really up to the visitor.
next: Ice Cream Springs, a town focusing on the human psyche