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BookBUS, various sites Sydney, 2010
commissioned by P4 (pilot) and Performance Space
BookBUS, a guide for participants provided for participants at the P4Pilot events

BookBUS is a live reading activity that visiedt three inner city Sydney sites from Friday 12 – Sunday 14 November 2010. Collaborating with The Footpath Library, a collection of donated books were transported in a mobile book van and staffed with volunteers who read to visitors aloud from a book of their choosing. Participants were encouraged to share their thoughts about the experience following the reading and to keep the book if they like.



All were welcome to attend. And books from participants' own libraries were shared, along with stories about belonging to the book. See the Performance Space website for more information

This work was commissioned by Performance Space and Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts in 2010 as a part of P4, a live art initiative supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body and by the British Council



BookBUS is about the way we invest and imagine ourselves within a book. It highlights how the books we read create a sense of who we are, both through our original encounter with the story and thereafter on all the occasions we reconceive ourselves by recollecting the book anew.

Reading aloud is associated for many with a longing for remnants of early childhood and parental intimacy in the bedtime story. While such humans emotions are universal the imaginary dimension of the book is facing dramatic change, some say that the book itself is under threat. This is mainly because of a series of social and technological revolutions, including the notion of reading as a private activity, the anonymity of library books and the rise of mass media and digital communications that bypass the object altogether.


























BookBUS sought to foster the art of storytelling to revive the experience of the book as an object that helps us to create, carry and share our dreams, ambitions and memories.