Bart De Nil

Hello I’m Bart, historian and culture professional. In my early life I studied to be a woodworker and car mechanic. Later, when studying history in Ghent (Flanders) I was absorbed by social history and textile heritage. Subsequently I wrote a master’s thesis about the way the labour movements used the novel, fiction and libraries as a tools for the social mobility of the working class.

I continued this as a heritage professional (and volunteer) in community projects about the social history of textile workers in the countryside, the wonderful world of pigeon sport culture, a textile strike called the ‘cow of Wetteren’ and other projects. I did research and developed projects with local people looking at how stories can sustainably be embedded in neighbourhoods and communities. From there I moved to delivering long-term outreach projects that focus on the use of heritage collections to improve the health and wellbeing of people and communities. For the past number of years, I have been a leading voice in, discussions on culture-led wellbeing in Belgium, but with considerable international impact.

Now I mostly work on reading and wellbeing and in the autumn of 2021 I'm publishing a book about the role libraries play in tackling inequality and improving the wellbeing of individuals and communities through creative community engagement.