In her first post for Walkspace, Megan Henebury goes for a walk in Birmingham city centre on the day the shops re-opened.
A non-essential walk
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Lucy Parris is looking for people to take part in her socially distanced walking project on June 20th. We included Lucy in our recent round-up of West Midlands walking artists and we look forward to seeing how this turns out. Says Lucy: I would like you to join me in a ‘socially distanced walk’ (this […]
Robson on… Marvellous maps
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I can’t really write about walking without writing about maps. Hand drawn, Ordnance Survey, road, tube, physical, nautical, political, climatic, thematic, ancient, fictional maps, if you can think of it there is probably a map for it. A note before we proceed, everyone can learn to read maps, don’t believe any nonsense that some people […]
Six lockdown walks with Alys and John
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There's much to enjoy in this correspondence between writer Alys Fowler (who you may know from her memoir Hidden Nature kayaking Birmingham's canals) and artist John Newling (whose exhibition Dear Nature was on at Ikon before lockdown). It takes the form of six letters with photographs over April and May. You can read them on […]
Reading the streets
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One small consolation for walkers in lockdown is that it's no longer necessary to travel to Manchester to join the Loiterers Resistance Movement for one of their First Sunday strolls. For the past three months the Loiterers have been conducting their group walks remotely meaning that anyone can join in from anywhere in the world. […]
The impossibility of straight walking
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While chatting about walking the other day, as we do, Fiona mentioned something she'd read in Shane O'Mara's excellent book In Praise Of Walking. Humans are, apparently, incapable of walking in straight lines when blindfolded or otherwise prevented from seeing landmarks. Participants were asked to walk either in a large and dense forest or in […]
Marching against racism in Birmingham
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Connecting the current #BLM protests with marches since the 1960s.
A time capsule of art in the age of Covid
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Have you made a piece of work, walking or otherwise, in response to the Coronavirus pandemic? As the world suddenly changed a lot of us found our art practice was a vital way to make sense of it all and the National Academy of Sciences in the USA is looking to archive this hopefully unique […]
We announced ourselves to the venerable Walking Artists Network (WAN) email list this weekend, asking for any people doing walk-work in the West Mids to say hello. And a few did! So this is the first WAITWMWRCA, roundups of people new to use that you might want to check out. Lucy Parris is a printmaker […]
Walking the Pipe with Kate Green
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Following an arbitrary line is a tried and tested technique for the curious walker. The landscape and its contents will reveal themselves in a sequence determined by your line. Pick a start, an end and draw line between them. Follow that line and keep you eyes and ears open. Kate Green spent the last year […]