Ever since a school trip to Paris, which included a visit to the Auguste Rodin Museum, I’ve been struck by his sculpture called The Burgers of Calais that commemorates an event during the Hundred Years War. The original piece was commissioned by the Calais municipality, and was erected on a pedestal in front of the Parc Richelieu. Purportedly Rodin actually wanted it to be erected at street level so that the citizens of Calais could literally walk beside it. There is a limited number of editions of the statue, distributed to various cities, including one erected in Victoria Gardens, beside the Houses of Parliament in London.

Depicting the walking movement of humans in a sculpture or in statues would appear to be a challenge as one rarely comes across them, instead we admire people on horseback, sitting in chairs or standing stock still, and arguably the Calais’ Burgers aren’t walking. They are just standing as a forlorn group.

So whether you are taken by one of The Lone Men of Koakaland in Namibia or Nelson Mandela striding out at the front of The Freedom March in South Africa – a monument of walking statues that continues to grow in number – or mimicking Ronald Reagan in Budapest (see our feature image), we would love to learn about your favourites, and to add them to our walk · listen · create archive. 

We asked our one time Café guest, William B. Sharpe, author of The Art of Walking and with online public art tour guide Gail Astbury to recommend their favourites, but which are yours?

We have launched a social media campaign (across all our social media channels) with the hashtags #walkingstatues and #walkingart, inviting you to post pictures of statues of sculpture that depict walking. Each week we will try to add those posted, to this blog piece, below. Our plans are to incorporate these walking statues into our archive of walking pieces (would you like to join our group of volunteer archivists?). If we can track down their makers, we would love to include their reflections on their work, as audio viewpoints on our Placecloud.io platform.