RENEGADE GUIDES: THE PLACES WE GO, THE STORIES WE SHARE
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?
“I’ve often asked myself, what is a tour guide, really? Your work helps answer that. It redefines guiding as a platform for social change and storytelling rooted in respect for place and people. This guide shows that a tour guide is multi-dimensional—and it’s a resource we need.” - Larry Henderson, Soul of Harlem
“This guide is a great resource for people who are struggling and looking for ways to help their community.” - Alexandra Maruri, Bronx Historical Tours
“What an incredible resource!” - Barnali Ghosh, Berkeley South Asian Radical History Walking Tour
“Everyone interested in creative walking, walking art, place making/guarding/celebrating should check out (Saira’s new book).” - Clare Qualmann, Artist, Lecturer and Researcher
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Towards the end of 2024, during a highly contentious election season, writer, guide and founder of Living London, Saira Niazi, spent two months in the US (New York and San Francisco) developing a research project on tour guiding.
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, Niazi sought answers to the pressing questions that prompted her journey. What makes a tour? Who decides which stories get shared? How can we better support our communities?
The Renegade Guides handbook – a new resource, created with and for guides, is filled with practical advice, reflections, case studies, stories, ideas and a manifesto.
Buy a physical copy of the Renegade Guides handbook below. If you would like a large font, accessible version of the handbook, please get in touch. Alternatively download a FREE digital version!
THE HANDBOOK IS CURRENTLY OUT OF STOCK AND WILL BE AVAILABLE TO PURCHASE AGAIN FROM THE 30TH JUNE.
Renegade Guides Launch, 31/05/25, 5-7pm, Rabbits Road Press
“We educate people about things we care about and invite them to care about them too—to campaign, to take direct action, to join networks, or to volunteer. We introduce people to new foods and hidden gems. We challenge preconceived ideas and negative stereotypes…”
Come along to the launch of the Renegade Guides handbook – learn more about the research project and the processes involved, buy a copy of the book, and find out how you can become a guide, or preserve and share stories of people and place that matter to you. The author will be in conversation with Fatuma Khaireh.
This project was funded by the Churchill Fellowship, a UK charity which supports individual UK citizens to follow their passion for change, through learning from the world and bringing that knowledge back to the UK.
