18. The Jane’s Walk movement: connecting people and place simply, socially and generatively
This simple and very do-able way to start building connections has so much to recommend it
The international Jane’s Walk festival took place last weekend. Along with Sunday Assembly Edinburgh, I was the citywide host; we helped organise five community walks. This is a good opportunity to write about the Jane’s Walk movement and why it’s such a useful, interesting and achievable option for building micro-level neighbourhood community in an setting, and in urban contexts in particular.
Jane Jacobs and Jane’s Walk
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). Jane was most connected to her work in New York and Toronto (where the Jane’s Walk movement is based). She was one of the key founders of ‘new urbanism’ – stressing the value of diversity, walkability, mixed use & housing, connectivity, higher density (and therefore more sustainable services), environmentalism and quality of life. You can download a useful PDF of Ten Big Ideas she introduced from the Jane’s Walk website (free download).
Jane Jacobs was an outspoken critic of the ‘great scheme’ methods of orthodox urban planning in the second half of the twentieth century, where development took place on a grand scale with a focus on transport and traffic. Jacobs was more keen to look at how cities actually worked, looking at micro-levels of place and neighbourhood, as this article published on the centenary of her death attests. Here is a good short video about the debate between these two schools of urban planning and thinking.
Jane Jacobs’ supporters started the Jane’s Walk festival after her death, as a way to keep alive and grow the spirit of her work. The festival happens every year around her birthday, in early May (although they can happen at any time during the year, the focus of an annual festival is helpful). 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 pandemic has interrupted things, of course, but the movement is now back and rebuilding.
What makes a good Jane’s Walk?
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 a way to
share stories about the neighbourhood
discover unseen aspects of communities
use walking as a way to connect with neighbours and community members
promote dialogue.
This is done with openness and inclusivity. The walks 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.
Why is the Jane’s Walk concept and practice so interesting?
I really like this way of starting to create and build community connections on the micro-local and neighbourhood level. As a way of getting going, it has much to recommend it:
It’s relatively easy to do (assembling some people for a walk isn’t so hard, surely)
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.
Having led Jane’s Walks in Edinburgh’s West End in 2022 and again in 2023, I can vouch for the fact that it gets easier with practice. The first time was a little nerve-racking, wondering if anyone would show up (I put it on Eventbrite and had a couple of dozen registered, but you never know with a free event…). Plenty of those people came, along with others who had seen local publicity, and we had a good walk ‘beating the bounds’ (going around the edges) of the area. And yes, of course there were good natured discussions about where those boundaries were!
This year (2023) we had more registrations, partly because the local communication channels like our Facebook group had grown, and partly because those who joined the previous year had a good time and wanted to come again. There were five Edinburgh walks in all over the weekend, each with more people than last year. Huge thanks to the walk hosts!
The power of inclusive micro-local events
I think that developing and hosting inclusive neighbourhood events is a key part of building community. These events can turn into milestones in the year which happen on a continuing basis. A summer street party, a music weekend, a Christmas Fayre, a New Year / Hogmanay (as we call it in Scotland) event, a garden party, an open gardens weekend, a BBQ. It all depends where you are, what the traditions are, and what you think will get people involved and enjoying themselves together.
Lara Celini (another of our Jane’s Walk hosts) is an experienced village-builder in the Willowbrae district of Edinburgh. Some of the events she and her team have organised include:
A ‘big lunch’ with the street closed to traffic – which has become an annual event
This can also include things like making bunting sessions as part of the preparations
A #PetsofWillowbrae hashtag on social media so that people learn the names of all the pets
‘Viral kindness cards’ for people to pick up, seek help and offer support
Decorating windows (a popular thing in the COVID lockdown here in Edinburgh, pictures and teddy bears are popular) – see the Window Wanderland website for ideas
Sharing food events work very well – lots of people can contribute and enjoy!
Ceilidhs, barn dances and other formats which involve learning the dances which get people interacting. (Very popular in Scotland!)
Lantern procession – perhaps culminating in the dramatic burning of the lanterns!
Quizzes and other events – keep them fun (though there is definitely a place for serious quizzing too!)
Making ‘kindness cards’ for the local care home, getting the children involved and engaging with seniors
Other creative projects such as decorating cotton shopping bags to take away and use (instead of plastic bags)
Jumble trail – people put out things they no longer want, and everyone roams around collecting
Community weeding events (‘Willowbrae Weeds You’) to maintain community ground and streets.
You can hear Lara talking about her activities on one of the early Village In The City podcasts, and even see her talking about it on one of our calls:
Conclusions
A neighbourhood Jane’s Walk is a great way to get started with making connection and exploring the past, present and future of your area. You don’t need to know much about the place but if you live there you’ll have stories to tell and be able to hear and respond to others. It’s certainly an imaginative yet low-risk and creative way to start connecting with others.
The Jane’s Walk website was full of international information until recently, when it’s been down for renovation. I hope it will be back to strength for next year’s 2024 Festival. In the meantime, look around and see what’s been happening in your area. If the answer is ‘nothing’, maybe you can start thinking about it for the future?
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Dates and mates
The SOLWorld 2023 and Host Leadership Gathering 2023 events are both happening next month in Vienna! Please come and join us if you can. If you can’t make it this year, I’d love you to share the details with your contacts. Some of the most innovative, effective and generous people in the world of coaching, organisational change and leadership will be there. Maybe that includes you?
I was part of the fourth Bushe Marshak Institute authors salon a couple of weeks ago. We talked about ‘how to support leaders in generative and emergent change’ - a great topic. The conversation was recorded and you can see it now on the BMI Youtube channel: