“Letter to an Unknown Soldier” is a participatory writing project created by novelist and theatre-maker Neil Bartlett in collaboration with Kate Pullinger. They described the project as “a new kind of memorial, one made only of words, by thousands of people”. It was commissioned by 14-18 NOW to mark the centenary of the outbreak of World War One, along with other 107 projects realised by 420 contemporary artists in more than 220 locations across the UK. “Letter to an Unknown Soldier’ was inspired by the statue of the unknown soldier holding a letter in his hand that stands on Platform One of Paddington Station in London, created by Charles Sargeant Jagger. Pullinger and Bartlett invited people to stop for a moment and think about the war, asking: “If you were able to send a letter to this soldier, a man who served and was killed during World War One, what would you write?”.

The project was open to the public between 28th June and 4 August 2014. All 21439 letters submitted in this period were published and archived on the project website. They took various forms – printed, handwritten, written as a poem, accompanied with picture(s). A selection of 132 letters was published by William Collins as a book, edited by Pullinger and Bartlett.

In December 2023 the project’s website ( 1418now.org.uk ) was closed. Unfortunately, due to data protection, we are unable to archive “Letter to an Unknown Soldier” here. The British Library has all archival materials linked to the project and when these materials are made accessible to the public, we will update information here. Check out the screenshots slideshow on the right to see some archival visual materials. You can also view a recording of Kate reading her letter to an unknown soldier on Youtube, or see Kate’s TEDx talk on the project.

“Memory Makes Us” was a travelling live event organised by if:book Australia, in which writers were challenged to create a story by collecting inspiration from memories submitted by the general public. The project was realised during 2013-2015 in Australia and the United States. Participants could submit their memories online or in person, typewritten or handwritten on paper with the project logo or on a simple sticky note. Authors worked on the text during all-day events in public, using the submitted materials. The results were published in real-time on the website project and visible on a big screen in the event space.

The event in which Pullinger took part kicked off the project, and it was the only iteration where just one author participated. It took place on the 9th of July 2013 in Queensland State Library. The finished story was available online for a short time and then gradually disappeared, as planned by if:Book Australia’s Simon Groth, the creator of the project. Kate’s text from the project also appeared in a print publication published in 2015, after the cycle of Australian events was completed. The publication’s layout played with the idea of vanishing memories, as did the gradually disappearing digital texts on the project website (intentionally no longer accessible and not reconstructed).

Simon Groth said: “For the writers involved, this was performance distinct from other performative aspects of literature: it wasn’t a reading of a prepared work, nor was it freestyle poetry. It was improvisation not with speech but with text and the tools of contemporary writing: keyboard and cut-and-paste”.

Due to the ephemeral character of the work you cannot experience it now. “What remains of Memory Makes Us after the final event won’t be an archive, a repository, or even this book. It will be a collection of memories, imperfect, fleeting, and personal” explained Groth in the introduction for the print publication. Materials available here include a slideshow of images documenting the live event, a video presenting archival materials from the event and a digitised version of a publication created after a series of “Memory Makes Us” events, including Kate’s text. You can also have a look at a selection of typed memories delivered to Kate on the event day in the Archive and watch the video documenting the 2-year-long project and the print publication.

“Flight Paths: A Networked Novel” is a web-based project created by Kate Pullinger in collaboration with Chris Joseph and an international group of participants. It tells the story of Yacub, a young Pakistani man, whose life collides with Harriet, a middle-aged woman in London. The story was inspired by an article in The Guardian newspaper about a man who falls from the sky. “I’m continuing to develop the story that begins in Flight Paths on other platforms” – she explained on her blog in 2012, mentioning “Duel” and print novel “Landing Gear”.

Pullinger describes “Flight Paths” as a “reaction” to “A Million Penguins”, a 2007 participatory wiki-novel project she was involved and which she found “chaotic and exhausting”. The question behind “A Million Penguins” was whether a community could write a novel – in today’s terms, whether the writing of a novel could be crowd-sourced – while with “Flight Paths”, Pullinger and Joseph were curious about how collaboration could work during the research phase of their project. They invited readers to participate from the beginning in “Flight Paths” development, encouraging them to share stories, texts, pictures, audio recordings etc., that could be an inspiration for the “five little flash story hot points” Pullinger and Joseph were creating and to take part in the discussions on the work in progress. The first platform for such a community (much smaller than in the case of “A Million Penguins”) was a WordPress blog; then the project moved to a Netvibes Universe an early web aggregator. The five episodes were published on the website and all participants whose materials were used while creating the Flash stories were mentioned as co-authors. Pullinger and Joseph remember working on “Flight Paths” as a long process of finding the right formula for such a participatory project. “I’ve found I’ve needed ages to ponder it all and get my head round how best to make this project work online” – Pullinger wrote in April 2008. A sixth episode was added in 2012.

In 2011 Andy Campbell joined the “Flight Paths” team to work on the app version of the project that would work on all platforms. That was never released, but in 2012 an experimental open-source version of the first episode was published.

In the Archive you can see what the Netvibe Universe looked like as well as read the archived blog from the project.

“A Million Penguins” is a wiki-novel project launched in 2007 by Penguin Books and De Montfort University in collaboration with a group of MA students that Kate Pullinger led with Prof Sue Thomas. The project asked the question ‘Can a community write a novel?’ Pullinger described the project as ‘chaotic and exhausting but also exciting.’

The collaborative novel project was open to anyone with access to the internet who wanted to help write it and was created on MediaWiki. A team from De Montfort University, including students from the Online Master of Arts in Creative Writing and New Media program, coordinated it. The project was alive for 5 weeks in February-March 2007 and nearly 1500 people contributed.

Douglas Rushkoff characterised the project as follows:: “>>A Million Penguins<< looks like fun, but it's still likely to remain more a million penguins than a cohesive or coherent bird”. Pullinger used the experience of “A Million Penguins” in her future participatory writing projects, making them more coherent and community-based, with clearer roles and guidelines. “A Million Penguins” was taken offline. There is some documentation of the project in the slideshow on this page. You can also read parts of the project archived on the Wayback Machine or read a report of the project published by Bruce Manson and Sue Thomas in 2008.