Announcing the Barefoot Wayfarer Pamphlet Series

The Barefoot Wayfarer is a series of pamphlets published by the Schumacher Society that collects experiences of navigating the unknown.

Wayfaring* is traveling or journeying, especially on foot. Unlike a pilgrimage to a sacred place, the wayfarer has no particular destination in sight. Their journey into the (as yet) unknown is made in search of expanded meaning or insight. As a way to think about the journeys we make in life, wayfaring offers opportunities for slowing down, noticing more and becoming more alert.  When we take these journeys barefoot, we are intentionally more vulnerable, more fully open to what is present.

Sometimes we explain our achievements from the vantage of the present, as if we had always known our path. Alternatively, modesty or honesty might lead us to claim that what has happened was the result of accident, luck, or fate. This series is focussed on another way to talk about journeys. To think about how we can revisit them as they happened, to look at them as personal stories where doubt, surprise, intuition and the practice of noticing might offer clues as to how we can cultivate an approach of ethical wayfaring.

Pamphlets seem the perfect medium in which to capture the experiences of the wayfarer, who requires timely knowledge that is easy to pass on to others they meet on the way. The lightness of the pamphlet’s form should not distract from the fact that a pamphlet is a publication whose message is often urgent, a message that the author cares about deeply enough to often make pronouncements about in capital letters. Pamphleteers have been essayists, controverts, propagandists, lampoonists. To remain anonymous, authors are invited to publish under the name of a living organism.**

Pamphlets can contain treatises, how-to guides, collections, polemics and inventions. They get straight to the point, and are often deeply political, they might offer outspoken utopianism, or gentle guides in self-sufficiency. What they carry is not enough for a book, and too urgent to wait for there to be enough. They are quickly made and cheaply reproduced, with a physical presence and potential for chance encounters. 

Invitation to authors.
We invite short proposals (around 300 words) for pamphlets that could be read with interest and enjoyment during a walk to work or over a coffee, and left for the next person to find. If accepted for publication we will reproduce them as cheaply*** as possible and ‘throw them out of airplanes’ or other forms of distribution that invite chance encounters.

Plus submit your idea by email to;
Dr. Hannah Drayson, Trustee of the Schumacher Society/Member of the Editorial Team hannah.drayson[at]plymouth.ac.uk
and/or
Julie Richardson, Trustee of the Schumacher Society/Member of the Editorial Team julie.richardson[at]plymouth.ac.uk

Proposals will be reviewed by the Schumacher Society editorial team and you will receive feedback within three weeks. 

By contacting us you agree to our privacy and consent policy which can be found here.

This is an open access pamphlet published by the Schumacher Society under a creative commons license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.  Intellectual property rights remain with the author.

*Or what might be called flânerie- allowing yourself to be caught by the currents of the journey.
**A table of preferred organisms for the next 50 years will be provided by the society.
*** Cheap in environmental, social, spiritual and possibly financial terms. Hard copies will be printed on recycled paper.