Nottinghamshire County Council is launching a new cultural organisation called Inspire to manage its libraries, archives and cultural services across the county — and is looking to recruit members.
Inspire is a Community Benefit Society that will launch in the spring.

The council’s cultural services has a track record of inspiring people to achieve, learn and develop, whether through a love of reading, music, the arts or education.

Now as part of an innovative strategy to manage some of its cultural services, the council says the new society will give people a greater say in the way libraries, archives, arts and adult learning are managed.

People can continue to enjoy their local library and other council cultural and learning services, but have been urged to join.

Inspire membership is free and will give people the chance to have a say on how the society works and develops, receive an Inspire membership newsletter with special offers, discounts on events, and an invitation to its annual meeting.

Members will also be eligible to stand for election to Inspire’s Board, or to get involved with friends groups.

Coun John Knight, committee chairman for culture, at the council, said: “We have a proud record of running modern, popular and accessible library and cultural services across the county. We lend more than three million books from our libraries each year, with e-books and e-magazines increasingly popular and host thousands of events.

“We have recently invested £2.5m in our archives building, had a good Ofsted inspection of our community learning courses and help dozens of teenagers into training, education or employment through our Skills for Employment Service each year. We are committed to our library and cultural services, and Inspire provides an exciting opportunity for these services to be even more enterprising and creative to achieve benefits for local communities now and for future generations.”

Inspire will deliver public libraries, archives, arts, instrumental music teaching in schools, Community Learning and Skills Service, Nottinghamshire Music Hub and the Education Library Service for the council.

To find out more go to www.inspireculture.org.uk

Pictured are library assistant Denise Hall, council leader Alan Rhodes and Coun Knight.