The Walking Library is a library that carries books by foot. Inaugurated in 2012 by Professor Dee Heddon (University of Glasgow) and Dr Misha Myers (Deakin University), this creative research project brings books, reading, and walking into unexpected and dynamic relationships.

The Walking Library for a Wild City was commissioned in 2018 by Glasgow Life/European Championships. To gather books for this library we asked people for suggestions in response to the following questions:

What book reveals wildness in the city?

What book would you rewild by walking? The books that people suggested ranged wildly from those which help us see what is sometimes overlooked or under-acknowledged – for example, the variety of wild things growing in vacant lots or the secret lives of pigeons – to dystopian apocalyptic fiction where cities are destroyed but nature survives, and helpful pocket guides to urban foraging.

You are invited to join The Walking Library’s co-founder Dee Heddon for an in-person walk as part of The Dear Green Bothy, in collaboration with the Glasgow Science Festival. Walking together – with books as our travelling companions – we will explore the wildness of our city.

Starting from outside Bridgeton Library, the walk will last approximately 90 minutes.

Numbers are limited to 15. Children must be accompanied by an adult.

Background Inaugurated in 2012, each Walking Library edition we create responds to – is specific to – the context of its walking. Each walk changes the shape – the content and the actions – of the library. The Walking Library took its first walk as part of the Sideways Festival 2012, a peripatetic arts festival that walked 333km from the western to the eastern border of Belgium ‘in the open’ and ‘on the go’, which aimed to connect ecology and culture through using the ‘slow ways’ or ‘slow paths’ of Flanders. Since then, we have curated The Walking Library for Sweeney’s Bothy (on the Isle of Eigg), The Walking Library for Women Walking (donated to Glasgow Women’s Library), The Walking Library for a Wild City, and The Walking Library for Forest Walks (commissioned by The National Forest Company). 

Presented as part of The Dear Green Bothy, a collaborative cultural programme from the University of Glasgow’s College of Arts showcasing creative and critical responses to climate emergency.

Hosted in partnership with the Glasgow Science Festival.

Photo Credit: Mhairi Law Alternative Text: a person in a coat and hat holds some books