You’d be amazed at everything that goes on in our local public library! This is a unique opportunity to be part of a guided tour of the Bessie Head library – the parts you’ve seen, and the parts you haven’t – and hear about what goes on there. Find out how the materials in the library are catalogued in the Cataloguing department; visit the archives/legal deposit section, where everything published in South Africa has to be deposited; find out more about the research section, children’s library, and computer facilities available to the public; learn about the meeting spaces available for you to use; hear about the poetry group, and the creative writing group, and all the other activities going on ‘behind the scenes’.

This class is just one of the Trade School classes on offer until Saturday 3rd September. A Trade School is a space where someone teaches something that they know something about to anyone who cares to come - so anyone can be a teacher, and anyone can be a learner. It is about disrupting the idea that only certain people have knowledge or skills, and that people should have to pay money to learn something. However, knowledge and skills are valuable; so in a Trade School teaching and learner are bartered for, with an emphasis on people giving time or energy, rather than things, in exchange for the knowledge or skills they are taught. For this class, for example, the library has asked for one of the following:

A promise to tell one other person all the wonderful things that happen in the library!
A5 notebooks for activities run by the library
Coloured paper for activities run by the library
Crayons for activities run by the library
Plain white A4 printing cardboard

Trade Schools are running all over the world - and between 15th August and 3rd September, thanks to a small autonomous collective, who have been working on this project for over a year under the aegis of the Paulo Freire Project (Centre for Adult Education, School of Education), a Trade School is once again being run on (and off) PMB campus!

Please visit http://www.tradeschool.coop and click on the Pietermaritzburg link to find a list of classes on offer, when and where they will be run, and what barter items the teachers are asking for. Remember to book your space, since numbers are limited! Any queries, please  email us at tradeschoolpmb@gmail.com.

See you there!