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Featured Marŝarto24 New 27 Jan, 2025

The Marŝarto24 winners have arrived

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We’ve come to the conclusion of the second instalment of the Marŝarto Awards, complementing our existing Sound Walk September Awards. Where the SWS Awards focus on sound walks, the Marŝarto Awards recognise walking art, excluding sound walks, produced in the previous year. 

Last year, for the first time, we were able to offer cash prizes for the winner and honourable mention. This year, we managed to double the prize money. The winner takes away a cool 500 euros, the honourable mention a mighty fine 200. Who said 2025 was off to a bad start? Americans? Oh, yeah, there’s that.

Us being able to offer cash prizes is because of you, our supporters. Help us help you, and consider becoming a supporting member of WLC. You will support the platform, and the community.

After our fine Online Jury spent a lot of time narrowing down the collection of submissions to a shortlist, our Grand Jury deliberated on who should take away the prizes. The winner came out on top with a clear gap between them and the rest of the field; congratulations to Tamsin Grainger for her work Walking Like a Tortoise.

Deciding on the honourable mention turned out to be a close affair. Eventually, Marie-Anne Lerjen‘s Sweat Mapping narrowly beat Scott Lunsford‘s PostRhetoric to the finish line.

Winner: Walking Like a Tortoise

The winner of our the Marŝarto Awards 2024 is Walking Like a Tortoise by Tamsin Grainger, a project focussing on Granton, in Edinburgh.

Here’s our Grand Juror Blake Morris, talking about the work.

Tamsin Grainger’s Walking Like a Tortoise was the jury’s clear choice this year, recognised for its community building, storytelling and deep engagement with the act of going for a walk. Emerging from a charming story about a stow-away tortoise in Granton, Edinburgh in the 1940s, it evolved into a slow unfolding of histories and personal experiences, past and present, shared through walking conversations. A combination of solo and group walks, Walking Like a Tortoise looked at boundaries historical and contemporary, and how they shape our experience of a place. Beginning as a collective walk in Edinburgh as part of the Festival of Terminalia, the project became an ongoing exploration of the boundaries of Granton, a district in Edinburgh, in which people were invited to walk “leisurely like a tortoise”.
Grounded in the invitation to walk with and the notion of radical-hospitality, the project spread out across the city, through walks, exhibitions and workshops accessible to community members of all ages. Some texts were translated into Arabic and Polish, inviting further parts of the community outside of the often anglophile walking sphere. Through a multi-lingual exploration of Granton, its surroundings, and their relationship to ancient histories from myriad perspectives, Walking Like a Tortoise both encountered and created a multi-cultural walking communityIt invited a wide variety of walkers to slow down and think about their city, its boundaries and the way they encounter them.
For these reasons, we are honoring it as the winner of Marŝarto24.

Honourable mention: Sweat Mapping

The honourable mention for the Marŝarto Awards 2024 goes to Marie-Anne Lerjen‘s Sweat Mapping, a hike which culminated in a map, literally drawn in sweat.

Related:  Urban Tree festival 2023 writing competition shortlist announced.

Here’s Grand Juror Radhika Subramaniam‘s interpretation of the work.

When the body heats up, as we exert ourselves, over long distances, in hot weather, the pores in our skin release salty moisture to cool us down. Marie-Anne Lerjen’s piece Sweat Mapping draws this basic corporeal reality up through a pipette to map bodies in motion as well as the terrain through which they move. Conducted on a five-hour walk from Girona to Banyoles in Catalonia in summer 2024, Lerjen spoke to individual participants about the sensations of walking in the heat, archiving both the conversations and the walk with a few beads of sweat from each of them. Laying a piece of glass atop a sketch of the region, she traced its water systems with the collection of sweat droplets so that the bodies of the walkers ran into the topographies they traversed. The resulting trace map revealed through the residue the cycles that connect the air, the land and its waters, and our fleshy, sweaty selves. An audio recording from the conversations accompanies the work. Sweat Mapping is as humorous as it is freighted. It prompts us to ask: what bells of guidance do the beads of our bodies’ own thermoregulatory mechanisms sound in a rapidly warming world?

What’s next?

We’re delighted that all members of the Grand Jury stay on for another year, which, with their maximum tenure being three years, will be their last. If you’re interested to join our community of reviewers, contact us. We tend to draw members of the Grand Jury from our Online Jury, and we’re always looking to expand this excellent group of experts.

Submissions for the Marŝarto Awards 2025 are already open, Submit your work today!

APA style reference

Fakhamzadeh, B., & Stuck, A., & Vermeire, G., & Lopez, A., & Hesse, F., & Corringham, V., & Morris, B., & Gari, C., & Subramaniam, R., & Zeiske, C. (2025). The Marŝarto24 winners have arrived. walk · listen · create. https://walklistencreate.org/2025/01/27/the-marsarto24-winners-have-arrived/

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walking-likje-a-tortoise-marsato-award-image-Tamsin-Grainger.jpeg
Walking piece

Walking Like a Tortoise

Walking Like a Tortoise started with collective walking around the edge of Edinburgh to celebrate the Festival of Terminalia. It was followed by more walks, creative responses and art-making, much questioning, conversation & radical hospitality.

lerjentours_sweat-mapping_0_kl.jpg
Walking piece

Sweat Mapping

The project “Sweat Mapping” revolves around sweat when walking in the heat and was implemented on the occasion of a hike as part of a meeting of international walking artists in Spain.


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squoil

To wear down a heel so that the boot or shoe is mis-shapen, as in “The heels on his boots were squoiled down.” from the Dictionary of Newfoundland English (University of Toronto Press, 1982).

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