Renegade Guides: the places we go, the stories we share

My name is Saira, I’m a writer, founder of Living London, and a “renegade” guide. I create and lead “wandering” tours that bring hidden gems to life through storytelling and anecdotes of people and place.

Living London began as a creative project through which I explored, photographed, and wrote about over a thousand hidden gems from eco-squats to artist studios. I regularly recorded my findings on my blog. Around ten years ago, I created my first wandering tour – since then, I’ve led hundreds of tours across London and in other places for organisations including Impact on Urban Health, Campaign for National Parks, Tate, UCL, Thames 21, Wimbledon Book Festival, Ace Hotel, and the Creative Society.

As a self-taught guide, there were many questions that I continued to ask myself, questions I couldn’t find answers to. How do we choose spaces and find stories? Whose stories do we share and what are the ethics of story sharing? How can we make tours and tour guiding more inclusive and accessible? Are there other ways we can preserve stories that are at risk of being lost forever? And how can we as guides improve our practice to better serve communities?

In 2023, I was thrilled to be awarded a Churchill Fellowship to carry out a research project that explored these questions and more. During my time in the USA, I explored local neighbourhoods across San Francisco and New York City, attended various walking tours and community events, and interviewed renegade guides, organisers, and storytellers from all walks of life.

In total, I visited 41 neighbourhoods, went on 32 guided tours, 39 self-guided tours, carried out 36 interviews, discovered 124 hidden gems, visited 37 community spaces, and attended 12 community events. It was a life-changing experience, through which I was exposed to so many new ideas, new practices, and new ways of doing things. I fell in love with cities I had always dreamed of visiting, made friends for life, and reignited my passion for all things tour guiding and wayfinding.

I returned to the UK inspired, motivated, and thoroughly overwhelmed. I’d collated hours of recorded interviews, filled up various notebooks, and taken hundreds of photographs. I’d collected so many pamphlets, maps, books, and guides. How would I create a report using all the material I’d gathered?

I went back to my application and reminded myself of the key aims of my research project which were to provide a framework that would enable guides to work more intentionally and ethically, to outline ways in which we can improve our practice to better serve ourselves and our communities and to inspire more people, especially those from marginalised communities to become renegade guides and to share the places and people that matter to them.

Every day for several months, I spent hours in the library transcribing interviews, identifying points of connection, reflecting on stories to share, and deciding on topics to include. I wanted to create a manual that was coherent, timely, accessible and most of all, useful.

This summer, I completed my report – the Renegade Guides handbook, a new resource, created with and for guides. The handbook is filled with practical advice, reflections, case studies, stories, ideas, and a manifesto. I printed and distributed the book to all the contributors, in the USA, UK and beyond, as well as other founders, guides, and those interested in guiding.

The handbook was launched at Rabbits Road Press at the Old Manor Park Library in May this year to a crowd of guides, explorers, storytellers, socially engaged artists and friends. Since then, I’ve continued to share my learnings.

Over the next few months, I’ll be speaking about my project at Walworth Library and John Harvard Library. I’ll be presenting my findings at the walk, listen, café, an online space for walking artists. To staff at Wikimedia, and to guides in training at Clerkenwell & Islington Guiding Association. I’ve been invited to take part in a pilot grant on the theme of “Walking, Power and Inclusion” run by the School of Advanced Study. In addition, I am continuing to design and deliver various walking tours for clients including the Bloomsbury Festival, Westminster University, and Croydon Council. I’m also exploring collaboration opportunities with Open Cities.

On a personal level, I’ve continued to develop my creative practice as a walking artist. I recently completed an art residency at Metal where I began working on a new fiction project rooted in place, and I’m currently participating in Culturally Mindful, a new creative health art residency with Wandsworth Council. The residency will allow me to co-design and deliver a creative health project with a community group.

The Churchill Fellowship gave me confidence, allowed me to build my skills, and brought me so much joy, wonder, magic, and inspiration. Through it, I connected with so many inspirational people, places, and projects. It enabled me to improve my practice and reconnect with the things that make me feel alive: writing, exploring, storytelling, learning, sharing, and connecting people and places.

You can stay updated on my work through my website, read my latest newsletter, or follow me on Instagram.