As a leading element of our Student Success Project at Brunel, we celebrated the Liberated Library launch last Thursday 22nd February in The Academy.

Our Liberated Library campaign strives to diversify our library and offer new books by authors from the global south, people of colour, female, LGBT+, and disabled authors. This will enhance the student experience when accessing the library, whilst also liberating student’s education away from standard white male and Eurocentric reading lists. It will enable students to look at different perspectives of life, and use this knowledge in their education to help them obtain a good degree.

The event was a success with over 70 guests arriving for an afternoon of speeches and student led poetry slams, and an ncredible reading from the acclaimed John Agard.

Iqbad Miah, one of the campaign organisers, says: John Agard was just absolutely amazing, he brought together the whole audience with his enthusiasm and charismatic persona. I am truly converted to reading poems now from his performance words cannot describe how he encapsulated the audience and made us all sing along. The event ended with the mentioning of the creative project competition and networking. It was just so inspiring to see potential award winning poets of the future right in front of your doorstep.