A night-time walking arts adventure in Deptford will give people a unique perspective of the city.

The Midnight Run, which was devised by poet and playwright Inua Ellams a decade ago when his bus failed to turn up, will let audiences explore and create while the city sleeps.

Starting at 5.45pm on Saturday, July 19, audiences will be taken on a walking tour that starts at The Albany in Deptford and takes them through the night with various artists entertaining them and bringing them together while most of the population is asleep.

To celebrate its 10th birthday, The Midnight Run is going on a European tour with shows in Rome, Madrid, Berlin and Paris. In London, there will be four simultaneous events including one working with Deptford’s Albany Theatre.

It all started after Inua’s bus failed to turned up after a night out in Battersea.

He said: “I just decided to walk the bus route with a friend of mine. When the bus didn’t turn up we carried on walking and spent the next six to eight hours walking through the city and talking and laughing and visiting old places we had been to as kids.

 “We just enjoyed seeing the city at night without the terrorism of cars or other pedestrians or anything really, we could just enjoy the city at our own pace.”

The 30-year-old, whose work has been commissioned by the BBC and the National Theatre and was previously The Albany’s resident artist, added: “The following year we tried to do something similar with a large group of my friends and that is where it started.

“Now I just do it in various cities across the world with various local artists who I invite to document The Midnight Run but also to run different workshops during The Midnight Run, anything from improvisational theatre to poetry to filmmaking to photography.”

Audiences vary greatly, Inua said, from the enthusiastic people who love exploring the city and look forward to doing it with a group to the more hesitant.

He said: “We have everything from mothers who came to the Midnight Run because it was the first time their 12-year-old daughter had slept over since they were born and they didn’t want to be home alone to couples on their first date to married couples on their honeymoon.

“It’s a wide variety of people and what they come away with is a sense of achievement when they spend that amount of time with complete strangers and you find other ways of looking through a city you thought you knew.

“That sense of accomplishment and that community which we create over the course of the night is just electric. That’s what they tend to remember.”

The Midnight Run leaves from The Albany in Deptford at 5.45pm on Saturday, July 18, and returns at around 6am on Sunday, July 19. Go to thealbany.org.uk