How can tours enable us to notice and appreciate our built environment and more fully inhabit the spaces we live in and places we traverse? What is a renegade guide? Who decides which stories get shared? How can we make tours more inclusive and accessible? Are there other ways we can preserve and share stories of people and place at risk of being lost?

Towards the end of 2024, during a highly contentious election season, guide and founder of Living London, spent two months in the US (New York and San Francisco) attending various walking tours and community events, exploring hidden gems and local neighbourhoods and interviewing renegade guides, organisers and storytellers from all walks of life trying to find answers to these questions and more.

Come along to the launch of the Renegade Guides handbook – a new resource, created with and for guides. It contains practical advice, case studies, stories, reflections, ideas, and a manifesto. Chapters include:

– The Truth About Places
– Way to Make Tours Inclusive and Accessible
– Community Archiving
– How to Find Hidden Gems
– What We Can and Can’t Talk About
– A Love Letter to Public Transport + more!

It will available to download (for free) from the 2nd June on my website (www.livinglondon.org). Alternatively, you can buy a physical copy at the launch event in London on the 31st May and from my online bookshop soon after.

Although it was created with walking tour guides in mind, much of the information provided may be equally valuable to creatives, storytellers, cultural workers, community organisers, artists, activists, explorers and writers of place.

Book a ticket to the event: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/renegade-guides-handbook-launch-tickets-1335140895359! Free. Limited spaces. This project was funded by the Churchill Fellowship.

Best wishes and hope to see you there