The Book of St Helens is a guidebook to the town of St Helens created in collaboration with 146 local primary school children. Part fictional imagining, part actual guidebook, the project invites its audience to see and experience the town through the eyes of some of its youngest inhabitants.

The guidebook 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. Whether you are a visitor to St Helens or a local resident, the project is a way of expanding what you think you know about the town and an invitation to participate in a conversation about the very different values and meanings that adults and children ascribe to the things they encounter in the world around them.

For the young people involved the project is an opportunity to reflect on and document their unique experiences of St Helens – to describe the distinctive texture of their own lives and to challenge adults to think about the space they enable children to take up in the world.

For the wider town, the book is an opportunity to reconsider the narratives of importance that shape our perception of that place. Who decides what is or isn’t worth seeing? Who makes decisions about what places are worth preserving and what can be allowed to fall into ruin or disappear completely? Who tells the stories that define the identity of our towns and cities, and how can we begin to empower people to tell new stories, and challenge those with power to listen to them?

You can download a copy of the Book of St Helens from the Heart of Glass website here.

Created by Andy Field and Beckie Darlington in collabration with children from Ashurst, Broad Oak and Rainford Primary schools

Illustrated by Rhi Moxon

Designed by Will Brady

Produced by Suzanne Dempsey-Sawin and Kate Houlton

Commissioned by Heart of Glass