Meet Danielle Cohen
London Blue Badge Guide, storyteller and creator of memorable London experiences
I’ve been working with visitors to London for more than 25 years. I’m Danielle Cohen — although some former clients and colleagues may remember me as Danielle Cooper.
I began in the late 1990s as a Tour Manager, working particularly with groups of American teenagers. The company I worked for encouraged us to create interactive activities that brought the culture and history of the countries we were visiting to life, rather than simply presenting a stream of facts.
It was an extraordinary introduction to the travel world and taught me how to engage different groups, adapt when plans change and find imaginative ways of bringing places to life. Those early years were also when I first began guiding in London — and realised that this was something I wanted to pursue professionally
Becoming a Blue Badge Guide
In 2003, I qualified as a London Blue Badge Tourist Guide.
The Blue Badge is widely regarded as the gold standard of professional tourist guiding, both in the UK and internationally. The training is rigorous and wide-ranging, covering London’s history, art, architecture, major attractions and institutions, as well as the practical skills needed to guide visitors around a complex and constantly changing city.
For me, though, being a Blue Badge Guide is about much more than learning facts. It is about understanding the bigger picture, making connections, telling a good story and adapting a tour to the people in front of you.
Two groups can visit exactly the same place and have completely different experiences — and that is one of the things I still love about guiding.
Guiding through the years
After I married and had children, my guiding naturally changed too. For many years I worked extensively with children and family groups, which reinforced something I had learned right at the beginning: if you want people to remember something, you have to make it interesting.
As my own children grew older, I increasingly began working with adult groups, including U3A-style groups whose members wanted more time for discussion, context and specialist subjects.
My own interests have developed along the way, particularly art, gardens, Jewish London, the City and social history. I am still constantly researching, discovering new stories and finding different ways of looking at places I may have visited many times before.
Why Experience Days?
Over the years, I’ve come to value more and more the importance of making time for ourselves and doing things simply because they bring us pleasure.
That thought lies behind my Experience Days.
I wanted to create days that go beyond a traditional sightseeing tour — bringing together expert guiding with carefully chosen experiences that invite you to take part, create, discover or try something new.
Depending on the day, that might mean a hands-on creative activity, a workshop with a specialist, a relaxed lunch or another experience connected to the theme. Some are offered on selected public dates, while others are particularly well suited to private groups. The idea is to make the day feel immersive, enjoyable and a little indulgent — something you have chosen to do entirely for yourself.
Alongside the Experience Days, I continue to offer private London tours, from the great landmarks to more specialist subjects, always shaped as far as possible around the interests, pace and time available to my guests.
London has been part of my working life for more than 25 years, and it still surprises me. Sharing its stories — and helping other people discover something they might otherwise have missed — remains one of the great pleasures of being a guide.
