Living London offers a variety of services from creating and delivering tailor-made wanderings, and providing training on making your own tours, to organising community events, carrying out research, offering consultation and producing content including stories, oral histories, photography, and books.

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Wanderings

Looking for something unique to do with your friends or family? Trying to organise a fun awayday for your work team? I have a wealth of experience in researching, creating and delivering wanderings across the city for different clients including community groups, corporate teams and universities. Prices start from £250.

Consultancy and Talks

Looking for a quirky events space, a remote film location or a beautiful wedding venue? I can provide a tailored consultancy service and can help you find the places, projects and people you’re searching for in London. Prices start from £200

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Community Events

Want to organise a book launch? A film-screening? A creative workshop? I organise, promote and deliver a range of community events, from storytelling wanderers socials, exhibitions and talks, and community consultations, to various celebrations. Prices start from £500.

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Research

An experienced researcher, I’ve interviewed members of various communities over the years, with the aims of collecting and sharing memories and stories. These have been used these to create memory tours, heritage books and oral histories. Prices start from £300.

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Content

From photography and stories, to social media campaigns and press releases, I produce high-quality content for charities, and arts organisations. I have ten years experience photographing community events and leading communications on diverse projects. Prices start from £250.

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Engagement

I’ve engaged with communities and networks across London, leading consultation, focus groups and workshops on issues including food, climate change, health and housing. I am able to lead on engagement projects. Prices start from £300.


Create Your Own Wandering Tour - Book a Private Workshop

Learn how to create and deliver a unique wandering tour based on a chosen theme and in an area you and your group are connected to!

Whether you’re a Business Improvement District that would like to encourage collaboration between local businesses, an environmental group seeking to share clean air walking routes, or a university programme convener wanting to create links between students and local communities, our workshops can help you curate an experience that will connect people to places, stories and to each other.

We’ve partnered with organisations including LSE, King’s College, UCL, Ace Hotel, and the Tate to deliver public and private workshops on creating tours on various themes for various purposes.

Workshops last 4 hours and include a practical wandering session and a classroom-based ideation/ planning session.

£300.00

Select Commissions

Below are a few of the varied commissions I’ve completed over the years, from devising fun photo walks for students and delivering bespoke wanderings promoting clean air walking routes, to creating short films and eye-catching books sharing the unique heritage of London’s diverse communities.

Creative Rewilding with the Creative Society

In 2021, I worked with the Creative Society as Freelance Artistic Director on the Creative Rewilding project. Creative Rewilding™ is a new methodology to develop a creative ecology full of fresh ideas. Based on the ‘rewilding’ philosophy, Creative Rewilding™ will be a movement that will enable us to sew new ‘seeds’ and rebuild our cultural landscape.

As part of the project, I've curated a series of wanderings. These are a safe way to connect people to places, stories and ideas, as well as inspire everyday exploration, mindfulness and creativity. Together we explored the city, reflected on how we use spaces in communities, shared ideas, and created new work by documenting our journey creatively in different parts of the city.

“The hand formation, which I initially intended to be a sculptural park bandstand, directly references a white hand sculpture above the entrance to the Bonnington Square Gardens in Vauxhall, London. On the Creative Society’s Rewilding tour we learnt that this community garden used to be a WWII bomb site which was reformed by squatters from the surrounding houses during the 70’s and 80’s. It’s now a welcome disruption to the cityscape.” - Toby Buchan

The work produced was shared at Southside House as part of the Creative Rewilding Show and Tell. View the virtual exhibition here.

City of Women Wandering Tours with UCL

City of Women is a project to rename TfL tube stops after significant women and non-binary people, led by Emma Watson, Reni Eddo-Lodge, and Rebecca Solnit, in partnership with Haymarket Books, TfL, CASA and the WOW Foundation.

The project emerged to challenge the tendency for women and non-binary people to be erased from urban histories through the convention of naming city streets and stations after powerful, white men. The first iteration of City of Women took place in New York, led by Solnit and geographer Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, and used the subway map to highlight the city’s remarkable female figures.”

In 2023-24, I was commissioned by UCL to create and deliver a Camden wandering tour that drew light on the project, and the inspiring women and non-binary people (past and present) connected to London places for students at the university.


Portrait of the South Downs

Portrait of the South Downs was multimedia creative project which sought to capture the South Downs National Park through short stories, photography, film and audio recordings. I was commissioned by Campaign for National Parks and the South Downs National Park Authority. During the spring and summer of 2022, I met, interviewed and photographed people from all walks of life about their connections to the South Downs National Park. The project also involved creating and leading public walks – or community wanderings – that connected hidden gems and shared some of the stories I discovered across different parts of the South Downs. Click here to view the portraits.

Northbank Walking Tours - Clean Air Routes

I was commissioned to create a number of bespoke wanderings in the Northbank area that connected hidden gems and shared stories on themes including Theatreland, River, Green Spaces and Heritage. The aim of the walks were to encourage those who worked and lived in the area to reduce their exposure to poor air quality by using cleaner air routes, to provide networking opportunities and to enable people to get to know the area better. Each walker was given a free cleaner air route map of the area. These tours were commissioned by Groundwork London, who are working in conjunction with the Northbank bid & the City of Westminster, and alongside local businesses to broadly improve air quality.

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Town Hall Hotel Photo Competition

I devised and organised a photo-competition for the Town Hall Hotel alongside the London Only instagram collective. The aim of the competition was to open up the hotel to the public, to share the building’s rich history and aesthetic beauty and to engage with the photography communities of Instagram in order to increase publicity of the hotel that was formerly a Town Hall and an iconic location for a variety of films and TV series’. The competition was listed in the Londonist and attracted much interest.

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Settling In - Film

During the Spring of 2014, Groundwork London created an Oral History Project called 'Women in Migration', working with women who have migrated to the UK within the last 10 years. The project focused on the importance of song and traditional craft skills for women in the work place or at home. 13 women from Greenwich & Bexley, generously gave up their time to tell us their stories of song and craft from their home countries. The women then gathered together to share their knowledge with each other through song and craft workshops. I filmed and co-edited Settling In which chronicles the project Click here to watch.

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Kings College - Stories and Spaces Wandering

I was commissioned by King College English Language Centre to create bespoke wandering that would connect the Guys Campus to the Strand Campus sharing stories of alumni and offering new students the opportunity to get to know the local area and to make new friends.

Place Writing

In 2023, I was shortlisted for the Arts Foundation Futures Award for Place Writing. As part of my role as Community Stories lead at Slow Ways, I worked with artists, writers, photographers, activists, explorers and community workers to share stories connecting people and place through routes. I clocked up hundreds of miles testing out walking routes mostly alone, but sometimes with strangers. My Slow Ways journeys took me to regions across the UK, from the North East to the South West of England, the West Highlands to the West of Wales. I often wrote about the people I met and places I discovered. For my last story I wrote about what a walking network might look like in Marseille.

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Cricklewood Memory Tours

I was commissioned by Ashford Place to create and lead memory tours exploring the stories and shared heritage of Irish and Pakistani elders who lived and worked in Cricklewood. As part of the project, I conducted independent research, interviewed members of the two communities, attended events celebrating St Patrick’s Day and Pakistan Independence Day, connected with local leaders and carried out in depth recces of the various hidden gems in the area. The tours included visits to many spaces which are usually closed to the public included Cricklewood Bus Garage, the Pakistan Community Centre and the Central Mosque of Brent. Click here to listen to the audio tour.

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Ace Hotel, Wandering Tours and Workshops

I was commissioned by Ace Hotel to create bespoke Hoxton and Shoreditch Wanderings sharing hidden East London gems and wondrous stories of people and place with the tourists, travellers and locals. The wanderings ended back at Ace Hotel where people were given an opportunity to create their own unique walking tour of an area they felt a connection with through interactive and fun workshops. The wanderings and workshops enabled individuals to connect with each other, to share stories and insights.

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River Wandle: Flowing through Time - Book

I was commissioned to design and edit a book chronicling an Oral History project about the River Wandle by Groundwork London in partnership with the Living Wandle Partnership Scheme, supported by the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund. Over the course of a year, stories were shared by different people across the community who shared a connection with the river; school children, elders, artists, writers, wanderers and the curious. This book is a collection of some of the most interesting stories we came by. Click here to have a read of the book and to find out more about the project.

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London Diaries

I love writing about London communities and places. In the past, I’ve written for Huck Magazine, the Newstatesman, Time Out, Ace and Untapped Cities. Click here to have a read of an article I wrote about my journey towards becoming a renegade guide.

Beach of Dreams

From summer 2024- spring 2025, award-winning photographer Tessa Bunney and I embarked on an extraordinary journey to find out about kelp, seagrass and native oysters, and the work being done by DEFRA funded project, Stronger Shores, to reintroduce them into the waters they once called home. Commissioned as part of Beach of Dreams, a UK-wide coastal arts festival exploring the unique heritage, cultures, and futures of our coastlines in the face of the climate emergency, we were invited to produce work inspired by our explorations, encounters and learnings. My account of the artistic process evolved to become the creative work. Click here to read.

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Wanderings for English Language Students

I’ve devised and delivered bespoke walks for Wimbledon School of English including an enchanted Chelsea photo-walk and hidden London wanderings for English language students sharing the iconic sights of London as well as lesser known hidden gems. I have a wealth of experience in engaging with students from a wide variety of backgrounds. I have led group visits and excursions to cities outside of London including Cambridge, Oxford and Brighton. I was responsible for delivering a two week long programme of excursions, events and activities tailored specifically towards the interests of 3 extraordinary young individuals living in the Georgian mountains (sponsored by the National Bank of Georgia).

Citizens of London

I partnered with citizenM Hotels to organise and host a series of ‘Citizens of London’ talks whereby inspiring Londoners were invited to talk about the incredible work they’re involved in and to share stories of the communities and places that make London what it is. The talks also gave people an opportunity to visit a citizenM Hotel and to enable them access into the hotels special spaces. Past speakers include a community organiser, photographer, author, magazine editor, and broadcaster.

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Photography

I’m a very versatile photographer - over the years I have photographed hundreds of community events, hidden London gems and people. I’ve also been commissioned to undertake specific photography projects by clients including Huck Magazine, Untapped Cities and University of the Arts London. I’ve also completed photo diaries in cities including Sydney, Lahore, Hanoi and Busan. I love capturing spaces and moments that are often overlooked or go unnoticed. To have a look at my personal collection of photographs click here. To have a look at examples of the community events I have photographed, click here.

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Dawn Walk & Creative Writing with Write and Shine

I’ve collaborated with Gemma Seltzer of Write and Shine to deliver unique dawn wanderings connecting hidden gems in areas including Chelsea and Waterloo. The walks have given writers an opportunity to explore, seek inspiration, discover new gems and scribe stories with writing prompts provided by Gemma.