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How to Build a Library (Edinburgh)
19 September 2025 | 5:45pm - 8:15pm
Film Synopsis: How to Build a Library
Two women in Nairobi, Shiro and Wachuka, have set out on an ambitious mission: to transform the neglected, historically whites-only McMillan Memorial Library into a vibrant, accessible public space that serves its local community. As the dust is brushed off the library’s archives of colonial Kenya and its stacks of books by majority non-African authors, thorny questions about the project emerge: found in every detail from the embedded bias of the Dewey Classification System, to the quietly troubling sources of funding they rely on to renovate the library. In a world where the call to “decolonise” our institutions has become widespread, How to Build a Library charts both the material and ideological complexities of what this means in practice.
CONTENT NOTES: Discussion of racism and colonialism; brief archival depictions of death, execution and dead animals.
ACCESS NOTES: Mainly visual storytelling and bright images.
+ short film: Space to Breathe
Screening as part of #TOAFF25
Beyond the Screen
Join Take One Action in conversation with Titilayo Farukuoye after the films to discuss the nuances of decolonial processes in Scottish institutions, and how entangled they remain with their colonial pasts.
Booking Information
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