How Intention Bridges the Bold with the Practical
Up to now, our conversations about programming boldness have been directed to libraries that are either hesitant about it or ready to be bold but not sure how to get there.
But what about staff who aren’t hesitant at all? Is there room in the conversation for those who want to forge ahead? They have the program idea and the energy — and they’re ready to jump in with both feet while their colleagues and community are still catching up.
Ideas and energy are good things. And so is being able to practically say:
What the program is actually trying to address and why
How the program will be positioned to various audiences and stakeholders
What outcomes are desired and how to know if the outcomes are achieved
How pushback or unexpected consequences will be managed
If the answers aren’t clear in some or all instances, that’s when you know it’s time to pause and focus on intention for a moment.
What is "intention" in the library programming context?
Intention is an understanding of your program’s purpose and the end goal. Staff may want to launch a big, novel, or risky program because of personal interest in a topic or a trend they want to follow. Intention ensures that, whatever the idea, the program is first designed with care and consideration, staff feel confident and prepared to run it, and the community will ultimately be enriched by it.
What intention doesn’t do is make the idea smaller or snuff it out. Instead, bringing intention to the program development process:
Sharpens the idea: Staff are able to clarify to themselves and other library stakeholders why this program and why now and which segments of the community it's directly speaking to or bringing together.
Expands ownership of the program: Instead of one or two staff members defending the program, more staff and stakeholders understand its reason for being, support creating it, and are willing to stand behind it.
Makes space for partners and experts: Staff are motivated to enlist knowledgeable people with relevant domain expertise to help design or co-facilitate the program for maximum benefit.
Gives the program a future: Staff know how to respond before, during, and after the program to questions, concerns, and praise alike — increasing awareness, acceptance, and enthusiasm for the program, and laying the groundwork for more like it.
Intention in action
What does intention look like in the real world?
In 2025-2026, the Urban Libraries Council (ULC) partnered with Everyday Democracy to train 50 staff members across 12 libraries in the U.S. and Canada. Staff learned techniques for “multipartial facilitation,” or the ability to actively support diverse perspectives in a conversation to ensure everyone is heard. Staff then ran 32 community conversations reaching 674 people on topics like housing, race, food justice, AI, and civil liberties.
Some staff went into these conversations expressing worry about things getting out of hand. And yet afterwards, the experiences were reported to be “overwhelmingly productive, with no significant incidents.”
One reason ULC points to is preparation: “By putting in significant care and intention ahead of time, participants were able to plan for success.”
4 steps to designing bold programs with intention
Library staff are already incredibly thoughtful when creating community programs. When the aim is to dial up the boldness or the proposed idea is hard or controversial, intention becomes that much more important. Here are some clear guidelines to ensure intention is at the center of your bold program’s design from the very beginning:
1. Talk through it together
Spend time discussing the program idea from all angles. Poke at it and refine it. Come up with a list of key questions that seek to answer what, why, who, and what next. Think about who in the community will read the flyer and sign up right away, or who will decide it’s not for them — and whether or not you’re OK with that.
2. Decide who should be in the design conversation
List the local partners and experts who can help design the program or should be involved in specific parts of it, and then bring them to the table. Figure out if there’s anyone you missed who may have worthy advice or content to add and talk to them too.
3. Map out what happens in the room — and outside of it
Take a note from the ULC cohort and follow what worked for them:
Set and enforce community agreements for productive participation
Arrange the room or space to promote a feeling of community
Surface any misconceptions and assumptions about the topic in advance
Gather reliable information so participants are working from shared facts
Document program impact through photos and quotes and share with the communications team for promotional purposes
While you’re at it, determine who should answer questions that may come from different corners of the community. Maybe frontline staff are best equipped, or it could be the comms team, the library director, or someone else.
4. Evaluate what "it worked" means
Write out your success criteria. How will you know your program landed? This isn’t necessarily about the number of people who turned out for it, but more qualitative things like whether:
People participated who didn’t already agree with each other
Participants experienced a shift or made a connection
Participants would come back
Library staff learned something they can use or expand on next time
Needing to skip or delay one or two of these steps or being unable to answer some of the questions posed doesn’t mean the program should be shelved completely. It just means there’s more conversation to have and details to work out before you launch and promote it.
Why intention matters so much
The most important takeaway here is why all of this matters. Being intentional about bold programming means:
Your community shows up because they trust that if your library is doing it, then the program will probably deliver something meaningful.
Your library can advocate for itself and make it clear to anyone asking that the program has real value for the community and your library is the one to provide it.
Your program generates demand for a second run because it impacted participants in such a powerful way the first time.
Your staff want to do it again because they created it, believed in it, carried it, and celebrated it together — and now they’re energized for more.
A bold idea doesn’t have to get out ahead of anyone and create a host of concerns. With intention, that bold idea has a practical path forward and can deliver the outcomes you want.
Partnering with ExD
We created Embolden by Design (ExD) to help library staff meet the demands of this complex moment and design bold programs in an intentional way.
ExD offers a full-day, onsite staff training experience with collaborative program development, promotion and press materials, and evaluation tools, plus follow-up support — everything your staff needs to create and deliver bold, community-centered programming with confidence and to keep doing it after our partnership wraps up.
Let’s talk about where your library is, where you want it to go, and how we can help.
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