On 15 April 2025, the Otto Foundation opened its ninth school library – the Blue Sky Library – for the high school learners at Seven Steps Academy for the Deaf.
This is the message we gave to the learners of Seven Steps at the opening celebration:
“It may just be our social media algorithm. And we do enjoy a good rap beef. But we have been getting a lot of Kendrick Lamar content in our feeds lately. And especially his half-time show at the Superbowl – where he really tore into Drake, and where he started his set saying, “the revolution is about to be televised”. This took us down an internet rabbit hole of factoids about Gil Scott-Heron and the origins of the slogan “the revolution will not be televised”.
In the 1970’s Gil Scott-Heron was trying to say that revolutions require action, and that change will not come when people are passively consuming content rather than questioning, challenging and imagining the world they want to live in.
Kendrick aside. We do not think the revolution will be televised. But we do think it may be started in a library.
Teenagers are familiar with the game “Truth or Dare” – the party game where players take turns choosing between answering a personal question truthfully or completing a daring challenge. Today, we want to tell a few “truths” and then challenge you with a “dare”.
First the truths
We make school libraries. We make them because kids, teens, and students who read are happier, they are kinder humans, they are smarter, and they do better at school and in life.
Seven Steps Academy for the Deaf has become part of our library story. And we are really honoured to be starting another chapter with you today.
The name “blue sky” came from the sessions that our designer Xanelé Mennen hosted with Seven Steps learners last year. In your feedback, you talked about how the colour blue makes you feel calm, peaceful, safe and relaxed.
We studied the drawings you created of your dream library. We took your ideas, and we tried to respond to as many of your requests as we could manage. You dreamed about a couch, a TV, a place to work on your own or with a team of classmates, laptops to do research, soft cushions and carpets, and books that would make you excited about reading. One of the suggested names for the library was the “Everyone’s Happiness” library. That is certainly what we dream of for this project.
In business and innovation, “blue-sky thinking” means dreaming big and thinking boldly – without limits or fear of failure. That is exactly what we hope this space will be: a place where students are free to ask big questions, to wonder, to imagine change and chase their dreams.
As you said in your design inputs – blue sky also means calm. We want the library to be a quiet refuge from the noise of the day. A place for reflection. A calm corner in your busy school.
But we don’t always want you to be calm. Sometimes we want you to be a little bit outraged. One of the reasons we love reading, is because it can turn ordinary people into revolutionaries. When we read, we are empowered to start questioning what is around is, to challenge what we do not believe is fair, or take a stand against what is not good for us.
Explore your library
We are sure that you won’t like every book in the library. You shouldn’t. But you should keep looking for the story that speaks to you. Read the non-fiction – where you will learn through information. And read the fiction – in which you will learn through imagination.
Read the biographies of people you admire. Read the fantasy books that completely ignore the rules around what we consider to be possible and impossible. Find those stories in which a character is faced with a challenge that you have experienced yourself and learn from how they respond to it.
You won’t love every book in the library, but every book will teach you something about yourself, or the world, or the people that you share it with.
And if you don’t find such books in the Blue Sky Library, please let us know! We want to stock the library with the books and stories that you are interested in. That is our job. So please make us work for you.
Now for the dare
Seven Steps learners. We are inviting you to use your library to become dreamers and rebels. We dare you to read, learn and become revolutionaries.”
