See Crawley through the eyes of its young inhabitants

“On our streets everyone is so kind. They smile and say hello in the morning. There are parks nearby and secret passages. We can see people playing football outside and when a train passes by we wave at the people inside the train. There are fields with long grass and huge brown (we think poisonous) mushrooms. There are houses on the side with garages. There are messy front gardens and lots of different coloured cats. It’s very peaceful and there’s lots of oxygen. Every weekend our friends knock on our doors and we go outside to play.”

An excerpt from The Book of Crawley

Part creative imaginings and part actual guide, The Book of Your Town is a series of guidebooks to a town or a city created by up to 250 local school children aged between 8 and 11. Written and edited by children, the book allows readers to experience a town or city through the eyes of that place’s youngest inhabitants.

Two new books are due to be released this year: The Book of Crawley on April 24 in partnership with Creative Playground Crawley, and The Book of Thetford on May 16, commissioned by the Norfolk & Norwich Festival.

The books depict famous and not-so-famous sites, things that children miss that don’t exist anymore, imaginary and adventurous walks, maps of local neighbourhood with various places – what is the best place to keep a tiger? which place will disappear first?

The children also design a new space in their town such as a park or a community centre and put only important things in there, they also suggest a list of improvements for their town (pet cinema anyone?).

This creative project is an opportunity to look beyond the familiar and the predictable. To see the sights that children deem important, to follow both their favourite walks and their favourite ways of walking, to navigate through real and imagined streets in their footsteps.