Find the nearest independent bookshop to your current location in London, or search for specialisms including, art, children’s, secondhand & many more. Also incorporates a commission by artist Dora García – users can generate a new story that becomes part of her project, Twenty-three million, five hundred and eighty-six thousand, four hundred and ninety stories.
Key features:
- Find your nearest independent bookshop.
- Find bookshops which have particular specialisms including, antiquarian, architecture, art, children’s, comic book, cookery, design, fashion, fiction, foreign language, gay, Indian, London, magic, music, philosophy, photography, poetry, politics, radical, second-hand, teen, theatre, travel, and zines.
- Generate a new story that is then added to a blog, and becomes part of Dora García’s project, Twenty-three million, five hundred and eighty-six thousand, four hundred and ninety stories (2013–ongoing).
A theoretical 23,586,490 stories can be produced by the app which uses text from García’s attempt to write all the stories in the world – All the Stories (2001–ongoing). With a restricted format of four lines All the Stories had collected over 2,527 stories at the time of writing.
The app combines these old stories to make new ones. Touch the button ‘Tell me a story’ and a brand new story will appear and be added to the blog where you can read the hundreds of stories made by different users of the app across the city. http://twentythreemillionstories.tumblr.com/
The London Bookshop Map is a not-for-profit project to promote independent bookshops and commission and distribute new text-based work by contemporary artists. 20,000 copies of our printed map are freely distributed across London each year, and available at every participating bookshop. Previous commissions have included works by David Batchelor, Katrina Palmer and Hannah Rickards.
Independent bookshops fill the gaps left by high street chains, stocking thoughtful and idiosyncratic choices of books rather than market-driven selections. They sustain local interests and offer different ways for communities to participate in a range of cultural activities. They are crucial platforms for alternative publishing.