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This chapter discusses the Learning Theater, a flexible library space that permits substantial patron involvement in designing dynamic environments to meet diverse learning goals.

We use a case study method to describe and discuss the Learning Theater.

We found that many challenges associated with designing and building a radically different library space to support patron learning goals can be resolved by eliciting patron input in all phases of the process.

We offer three lessons for other libraries intent on developing dramatically new kinds of library spaces: engage the community of users early and throughout, new spaces require robust communications to convey the possible set of uses to the community, and a flexible infrastructure and a responsive staff are key to meeting demands for unanticipated uses.

Our experience in developing the Learning Theater as part of the library education program suggests that libraries can share greater control of new flexible facilities and partner in the creation of intellectual properties to make best use of those facilities in more powerful ways than has typically been done in the past.

At Abilene Christian University, a variety of programs and training sessions in our Center for Teaching and Learning encourage faculty to reconsider academic conventions of pedagogy, to step out of the traditional sage on the stage model and connect with students through practices of hospitality and vulnerability. To truly engage in deep learning, risk is required on the part of both faculty and students, and these practices promote a decentered power structure within the classroom that allows authentic connection with the material and one another. Creating a student-centered classroom space that allows for respectful dialogue about challenging topics is one way to make our classrooms’ places of respect and collaboration, where all voices are an essential part of learning. In this chapter, the authors explore the literature on the benefits of practices of hospitality and vulnerability, share information about some well-established faculty development series that aid faculty in creating classroom environments that promote the practice of hospitality and vulnerability, and provide specific strategies for creating this type of environment. Authors share a variety of resources that readers can use to promote practices of hospitality and vulnerability in their own classrooms.

This empirical chapter explores the case of Baltic Creative Community Interest Company (BC CIC), a creative hub that enabled and demonstrated intrapersonal entrepreneurial capitals (Pret et al., 2016) to adapt quickly and develop novel offers for their tenants during an unprecedented period of crisis and change in the wider ecosystem. BCCIC is a community-owned property development company established to regenerate an underused post-industrial area in Liverpool and support the Creative and Digital community. Over the past decade, they have become a creative hub where small, unique micro-businesses thrive alongside more established enterprises.

Using an organisational ethnographic approach, the authors highlight the complexity in the conversion of entrepreneurial capitals and how this has demonstrated resilience and adaptability in the CIC during the global coronavirus pandemic in the 2020s. During the first coronavirus lockdown in 2020, The CIC responded swiftly to tenants by providing a wide variety of business support initiatives. Regular communications on sector-specific COVID-19 operational guidance and a support programme to help tenants apply for Liverpool City Council Small Business Support grants.

The establishment of this hub for creative entrepreneurs prior to the recent disruption proved invaluable. Although they were severely tested, emerging behaviours, such as agility, adaptability, and resilience during periods of crisis, were identified. This chapter offers key insights for scholars and those leading on creative hubs and cluster policy development and economic initiatives for creative sector support regionally, nationally, and internationally.

The archaeological record of small-scale societies is replete with examples of people expending considerable labor to craft both places and objects for communal rituals. Archaeologists often infer these efforts to have been the product of aspiring elites. This chapter focuses instead on the larger community responsible for the construction of places and objects, through a ritual economy analysis of the social logic people use to organize the production of ritual places and paraphernalia. A review of ethnographic and archaeological data suggests that the production of communal ritual places often involves the creation of sociograms, while the production of objects for use within these places encompasses a web of complementary and competitive relations. Two examples of large-scale communal ritual spaces, the early British Neolithic causewayed enclosures and the Ohio Hopewell geometric earthworks, are explored in light of these ethnographic and archaeological patterns.

Supporting entrepreneurship and innovation is a goal for many college campuses. How can your library support those goals? Should you add a makerspace to your library? Or make other costly changes? Library spaces help students think at a higher level, to be creative, innovative, and entrepreneurial. It is rare to have a dedicated spot on campus for thinking. Our libraries are those spaces. Spaces that strongly foster entrepreneurial thinking range from quiet reflective spaces to noisy collaborative spaces. You do not need to do an elaborate study to understand your library spaces. To assess your library spaces as they relate to innovative and entrepreneurial thinking, first take an inventory of your existing library spaces. By examining your existing spaces and the activities in them, you see which of the six essential types of spaces you have and which ones you lack. Once you have done a space assessment, you can see how you can readily add any of the six spaces you lack. A case study of an academic library’s space inventory, assessment, and recommendations helps illustrate the process. You use your space inventory for present and future space planning and to communicate your worth to your stakeholders. Libraries can market unique spaces to students (e.g. “Here are spaces to help you think creatively”), support Creative Campus initiatives, and promote library spaces which foster entrepreneurial thinking.

Sociological research on transgender and gender nonconforming (t/gnc) people has emphasized the interplay between identity and institutional contexts as constraining through dominant ideologies on sex and gender. In contrast, feminist research focused on embodied trauma has demonstrated numerous prospects for healing. In bridging these two fields of study through a socio-phenomenological lens, this research shows how consciousness emerges, facilitating the development of bodily agency. Empirically, the paper examines whether t/gnc people can use movement-based activities for healing, and how that healing occurs in particular spaces. In reflection of the impacts of insidious traumas on both the body and mind, this paper radically re-centers the body to consider the potential for healing through movement. Through an analysis of in-depth interviews with t/gnc people on their engagement with movement-based activities, I argue that participation in movement, on one’s own terms, enables a practice of bodily freedom. Moving beyond constraint and regulation, bodily agency requires a degree of bodily awareness (consciousness) that can emerge through participation in movement-based activities in t/gnc-centered and “personally-public” spaces. These results show that movement-based activities support t/gnc people in healing from the impacts of insidious traumas. These findings have empirical importance, exemplifying the power of fostering intentionality through movement practices, as well as theoretical implications for understanding the role of the body when exercising agency in processes of healing from embodied oppression outside of formal therapeutic landscapes.