14/04/2026
KnowHow Lab #1, part 1: Leadership with Care ✨
Our first KnowHow Lab brought together librarians and community organisers and we explored what mindful leadership looks like and how to lead teams with care, clarity, and intention.
We use practical leadership models and easy-to-use tools to help create a shared vision for projects and organisations. Because for libraries and community groups, care is central to how we lead, collaborate, and build trust.
Baytna (“our home” in Arabic) started as an unofficial daycare for refugee children and grew into a community of people who share the same values. 🌱
Dr. , founder of Athens Comics Library, shared what care-based leadership really looked like inside this project:
∙ Care is not about control. It’s about trust
∙ Leadership sometimes means holding space rather than directing action
∙ Who is being heard? Who is carrying invisible emotional labour? These were questions they asked constantly
∙ Care also meant ethics; no extractive storytelling, no performative participation, no reducing people to their trauma
∙ And care showed up in how people were welcomed and remembered; not just in programmes
In the context of displacement and inequality, care is also political. It resists systems that put productivity over dignity.
Care is not the opposite of leadership. Care is leadership. ✨
This is part one of our KnowHow Lab series, illustrated by .kostowska. Watch the session at the link in our bio!
KnowHow Labs are part of BUDDIES, an Erasmus+ funded project supporting library and community workers through mentoring, networking and policy recommendations, coordinated by the European Cultural Foundation, in collaboration with Aarhus Public Libraries Aarhus Bibliotekerne, Athens Comics Library and Public Libraries 2030, and co-funded by the European Union.
