Reimagining Summer Reading Through Local Art
San Francisco Public Library
Innovation Synopsis
In 2025, San Francisco Public Library reimagined how it selects the artist for Summer Stride, its largest annual public relations campaign. After more than a decade of commissioned artwork, the Library replaced its traditional invitation-based approach with an open call to the public, designed to broaden access for local artists and create a fair, rigorous selection process. This resulted in a successful partnership and collaboration with local children’s book artist Nidhi Chanani, increasing program participation, completion, and reading time. The project demonstrates how libraries can use their public platforms to invest in local creative communities while advancing its program outcomes.
Challenge/Opportunity
Since 2013, SFPL has partnered with esteemed local publisher Chronicle Books to commission art for Summer Stride—the largest public awareness campaign it runs every year, encompassing 28 library buildings and bookmobiles, posters, tote bags, public transit ads and a robust digital and social media campaign. Because this highly visible campaign provides a rare chance for an artist to reach thousands of people every day, SFPL recognized an opportunity to make access to this platform more equitable. In 2025, it decided to shift away from a traditional commission model to an open call for Bay Area children’s book artists. This change was designed to:
• Broaden access to a high-profile public platform for local artists.
• Strengthen SFPL’s support for the local creative community during post-pandemic economic recovery and rising costs of living.
• Demonstrate how a public library can use its visibility and resources to create meaningful opportunities for local creatives.
Key Elements of Innovation
In 2025, an 11-member SFPL project team designed and implemented a new, open process for selecting the Summer Stride artist. The team’s goals were to create a welcoming public messaging campaign and strategy, design a thoughtful recruitment, and establish a fair and rigorous method for evaluating applications.
The team designed the timeline, application requirements, communications, and review process. Required materials included an artist statement, resume, and portfolio of recent work. SFPL’s web team built a simple application portal. The team then developed a structured evaluation rubric to create a shortlist and engage stakeholders in the final selection of artist Nidhi Chanani out of a pool of 76 applicants.
The process was innovative because the Library built the system from the ground up, testing and refining each stage without knowing how many artists would apply or what evaluation criteria would work best. The result is a model that other libraries can adapt.
Achieved Outcomes
SFPL set two ambitious goals for our 2026 summer campaign: increase participation and completion of the summer challenge and create a high-profile opportunity for a local artist. By both measures, this was a success.
• Participation increased 22% from 2025 to 2026, compared with an average annual increase of 11.5% over the previous two years.
• Program finishers increased 19%, compared with an average annual increase of 13.5% over the previous two years.
• Total reading time increased 102%, reaching 60.2 million minutes—the strongest growth among these measures.
Additionally, the boost to a local artist was immeasurable. Compliments from the public included “So awesome to see @nidhiart being recognized by SFPL”, “Awesome idea in San Francisco with awesome art by the AWESOME @nidhiart Awesome!” and a WNBA Valkyries player was spotted sporting SFPL’s tshirt, demonstrating that the Library’s public platform can strengthen program participation and create meaningful opportunities.
