Hill of Content: human chain helps 103-year-old Melbourne bookshop relocate

Around 300 people showed up at Hill of Content today, forming a human chain to help move 17,000 books.
Photo of people passing books outdoors in the winter to help Hill of Content relocate their bookshop.

Hundreds of people have gathered on Bourke Street to help Melbourne’s oldest bookshop, Hill of Content, relocate to its new home.

Inspired by a similar initiative in the US earlier this year, Hill of Content placed a call-out for volunteers one week ago, seeking to attract 150 people to help form a human chain and move its collection of 17,000 books. Instead, around 300 people showed up, including long-standing customers and booklovers, while others from the bookshop’s surrounds simply saw the chain and joined to help, regardless of whether they’d stepped foot in the store before.

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Celina Lei is ArtsHub's Content Manager. She has previously worked across global art hubs in Beijing, Hong Kong and New York in both the commercial art sector and art criticism. She took part in drafting NAVA’s revised Code of Practice - Art Fairs and was the project manager of ArtsHub’s diverse writers initiative, Amplify Collective. Celina is based in Naarm/Melbourne. Instagram @lleizy_