Why has Parlia spotlighted the reading room of the British Museum on its homepage?
We have no books. No rooms. No manuscripts. No silent reading rooms…
Parlia is many things. It is an encyclopedia, an inquisitive community, a place to ask questions, a place to find answers, a platform to understand the way others think and interrogate your own perspectives. But, like the British Museum, once untangled we are fundamentally a knowledge project. We foresee Parlia becoming an authentic collection of the world’s ideas and opinions.
What is a knowledge project? We want to become a resource that provokes conversations, research, open dialogue and empathy in difficult times. And we want to achieve that by becoming the keepers of the world’s opinions.
Of course, we also want to know why we think what we think. And that requires collaboration and a community of trust.
Because of that, much of our knowledge project is also about protecting each other. Guarding the insights we have, and looking out for one another as a community. Understanding how we do that is part of the challenge.
We believe there are a finite number of opinions in the world. Partially, we call ourselves a project because we know our goal can be completed. Mostly, we call ourselves a project because it requires the collective ownership of everyone to grow into the exquisite collection that we envisage.
Our big ambitions came out of big inspirations. Ours originate in those that have come before us as repositories of the world’s knowledge. We’ve got a long way to go before we get there, but with your help we think that we might make it, and become the latest standard bearer of that tradition.