After the continuing success of the Sound Walk September Awards, we introduced the Marŝarto Awards this year, which highlight all walking art, minus sound walking. The configuration for the Marŝarto Awards is similar as for the SWS Awards; an Online Jury decides on a shortlist, and a Grand Jury then picks the winners.

The SWS and Marŝarto Awards share the Online Jury, but the Grand Jury is unique for each award. And, if you’re wondering, ‘marŝarto’ means ‘walking art’ in Esperanto.

The submission deadline for the Marŝarto Awards is the last day of October, after which the Online Jury has one more month to review the submissions.

In this inaugural year, we saw just short of 60 submission, almost the same number as for this year’s Sound Walk September Awards. Then, after the Online Jury goes over the list of pieces, some mathematical analysis results in the shortlist of what, collectively, the Online Jury believes is the most interesting work submitted for consideration.

Two pieces by WLC’s co-founder Babak Fakhamzadeh made the shortlist. As co-founder, his work is not eligible to win the award. This means that, out of our shortlist of 14 pieces, 12 are eligible for this year’s Marŝarto Awards.

Here’s this year’s inaugural shortlist for the Marŝarto Awards 2023:

• A Walking Poem (Javier Arce, Spain)
• Crossing the Limits Prespa / Grammos / Mytilene / Thermi / Sikinos / Marousi / Athens The 138 kilometers of Limits (Yannis Ziogas)
• Dérive app X Little Free Library (Babak Fakhamzadeh, Netherlands/Iran/Brazil) – out of competition
• In which I go for a walk (Babak Fakhamzadeh, Netherlands/Iran/Brazil) – out of competition
• ‘Invisible to Visible’ by Jenny Staff (Kel)
• One Hundred Days of Walking (Rachel Epp Buller, United States)
• Parallel Walking UK x ID (Fionacu, United Kingdom)
• Poor Old Horse (Sonia Overall)
• SCHRITTWEISE Choreographing City / Choreographing Walking (Katja Münker, Germany)
• The (Future) Wales Coast Path (Alison Neighbour)
• TRACE: A Remote Geography of the Mind (Christopher Kaczmarek, Deirdre Macleod)
• Walking in circles (Roelant Meijer)
• Walking the questions (Monique Besten, Netherlands/Spain)
• walkingwhiledrawing * Parnidis Dune (Janice Jensen, Germany)

You perhaps recall that this year, for both our awards, we are now offering cash prizes. The height of the prizes is dependent on the amount of monthly support WLC receives from the community, and we’ve been very close to doubling the prize money. We only need a few more supporters to make this happen. Perhaps this is the time for you to support our work, and through that, support artists like the ones above.
Read up on our membership program and contribute today.

Now, it’s up to the Marŝarto Grand Jury. They have about a month to review this year’s shortlist and decide on winners and honourable mentions. After that, we announce those who walk away with the prizes, early in 2024.

Who do you think is top of the list?