The Living Library event in Tallinn took place at the World Refugee Day on the 20th of June 2019 in the office of Estonian Refugee Council – Eesti Pagulasabi.
ERC had other activities at the same day in frames of the celebration of the World Refugee Day: African dance workshop, Photographic exhibition created during the project with refugees and tasting Middle-Eastern cuisine.
The advantage of this venue was that many of human books were in contact with the Council and involved before in their activities, so, they felt like home in that space.
Before the Living Library event about 9 different preparatory meetings took place: online meetings with organizers-librarians, 3 meetings of main organisers one week prior the event; 3 with the Human Books – to introduce the concept and working on their stories; meetings with our local partner – Pagulasabi.
The event started at 18:00 and had 3 reading sessions. The booking system was the distribution of the readers by the reading slots: participants could choose the Human Book and the slot time; the subscriptions were reflected at a chart board as readers came in. Each reading session lasted for 30 mins (approx.. 20 mins “reading” and at least 10 min. for questions); there were breaks of 15 minutes between the reading slots. The event finished around 20:30 and the team stayed for a circle of reflections, evaluation and dinner together.