Artists Talking Walking
Join the World Trails Network’s Arts & Culture Task Team for a curated programme of online conversations exploring the role walking artists play in shaping, investigating and celebrating trail culture.
The seminars will run between October 20, 2023 and July 19, 2024, generally on the last Friday every month at 4 pm GMT.
Presentations will be 20-30 minutes in length.
Specific topics we aim to feature include looking at the role walking artists can play in:
- Strengthening the identity and voices of communities through walking
- Gathering and sharing stories of the beliefs, heritage, landscape and aspirations of local people and their places
- Facilitating cultural exchange between hosts and visitors
- Generating conversation and debate on shared global issues whilst walking
- Celebrating diverse ecologies and humanity’s stewarding of them by making work in response to the natural landscape.
The conversations will be open to all invited artists—to enable sharing of practice and experience, also to all members of the World Trails Network, and wider walking artists networks. We will record conversations and make them available as a digital resource. Finally, through this programme, we’ll invite you to join the network, attend the conference and thus aim to nurture a diverse collection of approaches to walking art.
Upcoming Presentations
Friday July 19 4pm GMT
Summary and Aspirations, WTN Conference Preparation
Past Presentations
Friday Oct 20, 2023
Walking and Community Engagement
by Kinetika, featuring T100 Walking Festival and the Sendero Pacifico, Costa Rica
Watch a recording of the seminar
Friday Nov 24, 2023
Mapping Metropolitan Trails/Hotel Du Nord
by Charlie Fox, InspiralLondon and Collectif des Gammares
In this seminar, Charlie Fox will share the deep engaged story of Hotel du Nord and the creation of the GR2013 Walking Trail in Marseille/Provence – the first national Metropolitan Trail in France to concentrate on urban and industrial landscape, designed by walking artists, and inspired by the work of Christine Breton. The talk will also discuss the experiences of walking this Mediterranean city and across the metropole London, building community, interaction and activism through creativity.
Friday Dec 15, 2023
Walking & Wayfinding in the Westfjords
by Henry Fletcher and Jay Simpson
Henry and Jay pull back the veil to share their trail stories from Iceland’s wild northwest corner, the Westfjords. Over the past decade, both have led artist residencies, and conservation work camps and most recently completed a four-part guidebook celebrating the region’s cultural ecology and walking opportunities.
Friday Jan 19, 2024
Food on the Lebanon Mountain Trail
by Zeinab Jeambey
Encouraging Artisans – El Camino de Costa Rica
by Conchita Espino and Milagro Gamboa
Watch a recording of the seminar
Friday Feb 23 4pm GMT
Calcutta Photo Tours – Cultural Exchange
by Manjit Singh
Watch a recording of the seminar
Friday Mar 22 4pm GMT
Radical Walks, Essex Book Festival & Saffron Trail
by Ros Green & Lora Aziz
Friday April 19 4pm GMT
Walking and Well Being
by Dee Heddon
In this talk, Dee will share research findings from the recent research project, “Walking Publics/Walking Arts: Walking, Wellbeing and Community During Covid-19”, focusing specifically on how people engaged with walking during the pandemic. She will share one of the project’s outcomes, “The Walkbook: Recipes for Walking & Wellbeing”, which contains 30 recipes by artists, each intended to support people to walk well.
Watch a recording of this seminar
Friday May 24 4pm GMT
The Log Book: Walking and Writing About It
by Deb Todd Wheeler
RADIO SILENCE is a guided, geo-located walk through the trails of the Lost Pond. It is also a soundtrack, a book, and a site of reclamation. Since 2019, Deb has guided hundreds of audiowalks through the Lost Pond, with a geo-located sountrack (recorded by LENNYcollective musicians, and co-produced with Terrance Reeves). Although the geo-located audio doesn’t change, no two walks are the same. The RADIO SILENCE audiowalk began as a personal grief ritual, mourning the loss of Deb’s son Lucas and her brother Rob, and has evolved over time into a space of care, connection, and reclamation.
Mythwalking
by Adam Skerrett
Adam Skerrett is a wandering storyteller. He recently ‘beat-the-bounds’ of the Celtic Kingdom of Dumnonia (South-West England), and has since been walking the path-of-the-page, writing his debut book, Mythwalker.
Mythwalker trails the story-lines of the South West Coast Path, weaving together the wonder tales of his adventures, with the myths and legends of the land through which he walked. For Adam, ‘myth-walking’ is a way of reconnecting with the storied landscapes in which we live, and breathe, and have our being; a practice which he shares through guided ‘Myth Walk Experiences.’
Friday June 21 4pm GMT
Walking and the Environment
by Beach of Dreams Project, Kinetika, UK
- How can artistic interventions that engage communities in walking with communities create an emotional connection to the landscape/coastline?
- Will this activate groups to take care of themselves and their coastline in order to create healthier, happier and more sustainable communities for future generations?
The seminar will also provide an opportunity for you to learn more about Beach of Dreams, a UK-wide Coastal Arts Festival. From 1 May – 1 June 2025, the national creative programme will invite participants, organisations, artists, writers, scientists and walkers to embark on a month-long environmental exploration and celebration of the UK’s coastlines. Find out how you and/ or your organisation can get involved.
