Here at Village In The City we love things that are simple and effective. And we’ve just come across the international Jane’s Walk movement, which offers an excellent way to connect with your neighbours in an imaginative yet low-risk and creative way.
Jane’s Walk is a community-based approach to city building that uses volunteer-led walking tours to make space for people to connect around their neighbourhoods. It was founded in Toronto in 2006 in honour of community urban activist Jane Jacobs (1916-2006). Over the next decade, the movement saw rapid global uptake. In 2017, 1,700 Jane’s Walks took place in 225 cities around the world, spanning 37 countries and 6 continents. The movement continues to grow every year, with a focus on events around Jane Jacobs’ birthday in early May (this year 6-8 May 2022).
Jane’s Walks encourage people to share stories about their neighbourhoods, discover unseen aspects of their communities, and use walking as a way to connect with their neighbours. They are:
- Free, volunteer-led, and open to everyone
- Non-commercial and non-partisan
- Seek to promote dialogue – they are not ‘walking lectures’.
Hosts do not need to be experts, professional tour guides or anything else. They should have a desire to connect with people in their neighbourhood, plan a route, welcome them on the day and share stories as they walk for an hour or so.
Village In The City founder Mark McKergow is bringing Jane’s Walk to Edinburgh, Scotland this year, and it’s exciting that this is the very first time it’s happened anywhere in Scotland! You can see more about the Edinburgh events on their website.
So, could you host a Jane’s Walk in your neighbourhood? It’s relatively easy to do, there is no commitment beyond doing it once, and it could lead to some interesting and useful connections as well as re-visioning aspects of your local landscape and community. Here’s what to do:
- Check if there is already a Jane’s Walk city host for your city – http://janeswalk.org/cities/. If there is, contact them.
- If there isn’t an existing host, you can apply to be one. http://janeswalk.org/add-a-city/
- And/or you can just declare that you’re doing a Jane’s Walk in your area and go ahead! https://janeswalk.org/get-involved/lead-a-walk/
It’s worth getting involved with your city host – they will have access to graphics and resource to help you. With just a couple of weeks to go until Jane’s Walk Festival 2022, there is still time. Go for it! (And let us know here how you get on.)
