March 2026 we are holding 3 online Map Scrambles, in which artists will be discussing when and why they use maps or mapping to document their walking art.

Map Scramble 1 (Monday 23 7pm GMT)  

Map Scramble 2 (Wednesday 25 7pm GMT)

Map Scramble 3 (Thursday 26 7pm GMT)

Each events part of the EU Create Europe funded Walking Arts & Local Communities project and the events are free to join. After each event, a summary of that event, and the questions and discussion points raised by attendees and posted in the event chat will be added below. An edited recording of each event is available from our video archive or the event page. There are links above to the further Map Scrambles and should you wish to leave comments please go to the event page, to add these there (merely scroll to the bottom of the pertinent event page).

Presenters were invited to respond to 5 questions during their 3-4 minute recorded presentation – the five questions were:

A) Who you are and what was your walking piece that you documented with a map? 
B) Why you chose a map to document your piece?
C) What was the process of creating the map?
D) What were the plus points from having the map?
E) On reflection, what would you have done differently to improve on what you did, and why?

Each summary is generated by Zoom AI – so please inform us of any errors.

Map Scramble 1 – presenters David Haley (UK), Lucy Furlong (UK), Janette Kerr (UK) and Emily Artinian (US)

Host: Andrew Stuck – walk · listen · create
Date: Meeting held 23 March 2026
Theme: Mapping as a creative and reflective practice within walking arts.

Event Overview

Andrew Stuck welcomed participants and introduced four presenters who each shared an example of mapping within their artistic practice. The session explored the relationship between walking, storytelling, and cartography, followed by an open discussion and Q&A.

Presenters

David Haley – “Mapping Martin Wood”

• Commissioned by Chrysalis Arts Development.
• Investigated mapping as dialogue and storytelling instead of a visual or data‑driven act.
• Gave “agency to the wood,” producing a textual and sonic map that questioned human perspectives.
• Referenced ecological data, GIS, and poetic thinking around an “unremarkable wood.”

Lucy Furlong – “Amniotic City” (2011 / 2022)

• Poetry‑map project around London’s Fleet Street and St Paul’s Cathedral.
• Combined photos and poems in a fold‑out A6 map linked by a pin‑and‑string motif.
• Explored psycho-geographic drifting, motherhood, and feminine archetypes in the city.
• Reflected on publishing issues (ISBNs) and future possibilities for GPS or audio poem walks.

Janette Kerr – “As the Crow Flies”

• Straight‑line walk across Shetland with partner Steve Poole.
• Ignored terrain logic to follow a self‑imposed line, revealing new perspectives.
• Observed the challenges of mapping movement through heather, rocks, and lochs.
• Proposed that maps act as creative prompts rather than fixed guides.

Emily Artinian – “Give and Get / Junk Swap”

• Collaboration with artist Lin Charlston exploring value through object exchanges.
• Participants traded overlooked items and shared stories of what was given and received.
• Created maps both as planning tools and as memory records.
• Reflected on adding imagery to highlight contrasts between urban Chicago and rural Ludlow.

Discussion Highlights

Mapping as Storytelling

All speakers linked mapping to narrative, memory, and conversation rather than to geographic precision.
Maps and artists’ books share a sequential, tactile quality that supports storytelling.

Technology & Sound

Ideas included GPS‑triggered readings and sound maps that let participants hear poems in situ.

Deep Time & Historical Layers

Old OS maps and historic overlays can expose the buried temporal strata of a place.

Power & Critique

Participants discussed the colonial, Cartesian, and military roots of mapping and how artists can subvert them through personal or experiential maps.

Embodied & Internal Mapping

Mapping can be sensory and bodily—“to know a place properly, you must feel it.”
One participant described mapping the inside of her own body after injury.

Playfulness & Intangibility

Artists emphasised experimentation and uncertainty: “This map may not be accurate. You may find yourself lost—enjoy it.”

Closing Reflections

Summary Insight

The session revealed mapping as both an artistic method and a philosophical inquiry—connecting ecology, poetry, memory, and sensory experience. Rather than fixing space, these artists use mapping to question authority, reveal hidden narratives, and invite audiences to wander, listen, and create.

Questions from attendees for further discussion:

Tamsin Grainger: Emily, please can you tell us more about the ‘Daisy Chain Exchange’?

Annemarie Lopez: Kind of a question for all the artists. Or whoever wants to answer. Do you think of maps in your work as literal representations of places, or more as metaphors for space, place, a memory of a place, something else?

Karen from Riebeeck West, South Africa: David, I do like the interest in the other when walking in nature, I am on a farm where I do most of my walking- I recently started a walking project where I use a scroll and getting marks , from the place – as imprints, embossment, scrapings, etc.

Martyn Howe: National Library of Scotland layering maps from different periods side-by-side.

Ian Knight: Totally agree with Janette’s comments on the value of old maps and the way they allow the land to tell its own fascinating stories that can trigger so many research directions and ideas.

Kirsten Wehner: David’s description of the stream reminds me/us that other species and natural forces also ‘map’ the world in different ways – perhaps in the sense of recording through physical impressions their navigation of their environments. I’m interested in how these narratives might be discovered/represented.

Sara Dudman: Oh my goodness Iain and Janette – YES! My sporadic residency at the UK Hydrographic Office archive last year really shed light on the driving force of war and conflict in map and maritime chart-making.

Emily Artinian: Just want to mention 2 artists’ maps that have been important for me: Emma Kay’s maps from memory, and Gordon Matta Clark’s slices – mapped slivers of NYC that aren’t ‘owned’.

Title: Map Scramble 2
Date & Time: 25 March 2026
Host: Andrew Stuck – walk·listen·create
Attendees: 54 participants
Purpose: Second session in the Map Scramble series exploring how walking artists use mapping in their creative practice.
Context: Part of the EU‑funded Walking Arts and Local Communities project and the Walking Body Residency in Guimarães.

Presenters: Marlene Creates, Ruth Broadbent, Idit Nathan, Martin Eccles, Barbara Lounder and Rachel Gomme.

Martin P Eccles (UK) – Imagined Islands

• Walking sound artist and poet from North East England.
• Presented two “imagined islands” created through repeated walking routes and sound recordings.
• Maps act as processes, not endpoints—tools for coherence and embodied understanding.
• Uses replication and chance procedures in composition.

Ruth Broadbent (UK) – Puddle Worlds

• UK‑based artist exploring mapping through drawing and elemental processes.
• Created map‑like drawings from rainwater puddles during lockdown.
• Explored imaginary landscapes emerging from confined walking.
• Reflected on mapping as both real and imagined, shifting with time and weather.

Barbara Lounder (CAN) – Walking Alone and Together

• Canadian artist presenting a 2010 participatory walk in Gabrovo, Bulgaria.
• Participants navigated blindfolded using hand‑drawn “escape maps.”
• Explored non‑visual experience and the limits of maps as representations.
• Reflected on blindness, perception, and the idea that “the map is not the territory.”

Idit Elia Nathan (UK) – Seven Walks in the Holy City

• Jerusalem‑born artist using dice and cards to randomize walking routes.
• Compared historical and contemporary maps to reveal erased Palestinian sites.
• Created a counter‑map highlighting hidden histories and political absences.
• Discussed mapping as a form of resistance and re‑seeing.

Marlene Creates (CAN) – Boreal Poetry Garden Memory Maps

• Newfoundland‑based environmental artist.
• Invited local schoolchildren to guided walks with poets, musicians, and dancers.
• Children drew “memory maps” of their experience.
• Emphasized mapping as storytelling, memory, and ecological awareness.

Rachel Gomme (UK) – Forest of SE15

• London performance artist working with street trees.
• Collected bark rubbings from 2,222 trees across her postcode.
• Created a large composite drawing suggesting an urban forest.
• Reflected on mapping as a record of time and ecological change.

Key Discussion Themes
Mapping vs. Walking: Is the map documentation or part of the artwork itself?
Embodiment: The body as a living map; walking as inscription on landscape.
Imagination & Memory: Many works create imagined geographies or memory maps.
Layers & Palimpsests: Historical, geological, and emotional strata within place.
Politics of Mapping: Counter‑mapping, erasure, and reclaiming narratives.
Storytelling: Maps as narrative devices; walking as a form of story‑making.
Technology: Some artists use GIS or digital layering; others reject it for tactile, sensory mapping.

Closing Reflections
Presenters agreed that mapping is both process and metaphor—a way to think through walking, memory, and place.
Calls for continued dialogue on politics, embodiment, and storytelling in walking art.
Andrew Stuck encouraged participants to update their walk·listen·create profiles and submit works for upcoming events such as Sound Walk September, the Marsarto Award for walking art and the Urban Tree Festival.

Questions attendees raised for further discussion:

Alexandra Huddleston: “A binary is often presented between the richness of a real walk and the limitation of most maps — is this issue/problem something you struggle with in your maps?”
Joe Richardson: “Do any of you revisit the maps, re‑walk the routes, or draw from the maps to create new routes?”
Martyn Howe: “Is the collective unconscious is retained geospatially?”
Alexandra Huddleston: “How much are all of you inspired by the Fluxus artists (like Stanley Brouwn)?”
Joe Richardson: “Are any of you informed by Springgay and Truman’s activation devices? The dice reminded me of their practice.”

Map Scramble 3 – Documenting Walking Art with maps and mapping

Host: Andrew Stuck – walk · listen · create
Context: Part of the Walk EU Create programme, supported by the Creative Europe initiative.
Focus: Exploring how artists document walking art through maps—digital, physical, and conceptual.

Presenters: Tamsin Grainger, Hannah Stageman, Fiona Hooton, Bill Psarras, and Petra Johnson

Presentations

1. Bill Psarras (GK)

• Artist and Assistant Professor, University of the Peloponnese.
• Explores poetics of walking and digital psychogeography.
• Presented a project mapping unnamed streets in Athens via Google Maps, creating a fictional “no-name” territory.
• Investigates the politics and poetics of mapping, memory, and identity.

2. Hannah Stageman (UK)

• Artist and librarian at Goldsmiths.
• Discussed her Evening Walk series from the 2020 lockdown.
• Combined photography, collage, and traced maps to explore local rural and suburban landscapes.
• Reflected on the relationship between mapping, belonging, and postcard imagery as representations of place.

3. Fiona Hooton (Australia)

• Public artist and founder of Local Genie, a feminist collective leading projected night walks.
• Uses projection mapping to reveal hidden stories, especially those of women and underrepresented communities.
• Demonstrated an animated map of Canberra using Tag Tool, exploring light, space, and movement in nocturnal urban environments.

4. Tamsin Grainger (UK)

• Walking artist and shiatsu practitioner.
• Presented The Granton Burn Map, a stitched and embroidered representation of a hidden river in Edinburgh.
• Combines walking, listening, and bodily awareness to reveal unseen landscapes.
• Sees mapping as activism and care for place.

5. Petra Johnson (UK)

• Walking artist and researcher.
• Shared film-based “audiographic” work translating walking experiences into sound and movement.
• Explores seasonal rhythms, belonging, and more-than-human relationships through walking.

Discussion Highlights

• Analog vs Digital Maps:
  All artists use both; paper maps encourage tactile engagement while digital tools (GPS, Google Maps, apps) offer new layers of interaction.
• The Unknown and the Unmapped:
  Many artists are driven by the desire to uncover hidden or forgotten spaces, the “white areas” of maps, and the unseen narratives of land and community.
• Counter- and Alternative Mapping:
  Debate on mapping as a political act—challenging dominant “God’s-eye” views by creating embodied, emotional, and inclusive maps.
• Embodiment & Sensory Mapping:
  Discussion of how walking, stitching, or projecting can physically translate experience into mapping form—“felt maps” that express emotion and connection rather than geography.
• Night Walking & Accessibility:
  Fiona highlighted night walking as a feminist and political act, reclaiming urban spaces after dark.
• Re-humanizing Mapping:
  Petra introduced the anthropological idea of “auscultation”—listening deeply to place rather than surveying it—emphasizing attentiveness and empathy in mapping practice.
• Artistic Documentation:
  Conversation closed with reflections on how walking art might be archived, exhibited, or shared through videos, stitched works, projections, or collaborative installations.

Closing Thoughts

Participants concluded that mapping in walking art is less about navigation and more about relationship—between body, place, and story.
Future plans include further events exploring documentation methods (photography, sound, geolocation) and potential exhibitions of map-based walking art.