In association with the Arts & Culture Task Force of the World Trails Network, we are running a six month series of monthly online meetings with academic researchers, thought leaders, trail professionals and walking artists to investigate pilgrimage today.

Beginning in March, and to run on the first Tuesday of subsequent months, the first session on Pilgrimage Today framed pilgrimage as a multifaceted creative, spiritual, ecological, and communal process — an act of walking with intention that transforms both people and place.

Guests included Professor Kathryn Barush author of Imaging Pilgrimage: Art as Embodied Experience, Guy Hayward, Director and Co-founder of the British Pilgrimage Trust, and András Molnár from the Budapest Pilgrims Centre and World Trails network representative. Co-chaired by Lora Aziz, co-chair of the WTN Arts & Culture Task Force and Andrew Stuck.

For each even, we are calling on Zoom AI to generate a summary, that will be included below – please inform us of any inaccuracies.

András J. Molnár (Hungary)

Themes: Theology, geography, and evolving forms of pilgrimage

• Introduces “trailology” — an emerging interdisciplinary study of trails.
• Describes Hungary’s revival of pilgrimage routes and new initiatives such as the Merry Way Network and Pilgrimage Academy.
• Defines pilgrimage as an encounter between sacredness and spirituality — linking divine, place, and community.
• Notes a shift from traditional religious pilgrimage to personal, contemplative, and nature-based experiences.
• Argues that a pilgrim is “someone open to transformation.”
• Presents a “fractal model” of pilgrimage — blending chronos (ordinary time) and kairos (transformative time) to show that change can happen at any moment along the path.

Guy Hayward (UK)

Themes: Reimagining pilgrimage for a secular and plural age

• Co-founder, British Pilgrimage Trust — promoting “Bring Your Own Beliefs” pilgrimages.
• Offers free routes, sanctuary stays, and community training to revive walking as a spiritual and cultural act.
• Sees pilgrimage as creative attentiveness — walking with intention, openness, and humility, not confined to religion or specific destinations.
• Discusses the rise of pilgrimage as response to digital burnout and social fragmentation — a way to reconnect body, land, and spirit.
• Defines pilgrimage as a practice of surrender and transformation, not defined by faith or distance.
• Predicts a shift toward local, distributed, and ecological pilgrimages, emphasizing reciprocity with the land.
• Concludes: “A true pilgrim walks with trust and purity, open to great change.”

Kathryn (Kate) Barush (USA)

Themes: Art, material culture, and the metaphysics of walking

• Professor of Art History & Religion (Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley).
• Studies how art and objects become vessels of pilgrimage experience.
• Describes pilgrimage as communion across time — walking with “an invisible cloud of witnesses.”
• Introduces concept of “extra-temporal communitas” — connection between past, present, and future pilgrims.
• Links pilgrimage to psychogeography and surrealism, seeing it as an act of uncovering layers of history and memory.
• Shares case studies:
  • Phil Volker’s Backyard Camino (USA): a miniature Camino de Santiago built for personal healing.
  • Chip Sullivan and Liz Boults’ “Wisdom of Place”: tarot-themed art project linking the Green Man and the Fool as archetypes of the pilgrim stepping into the unknown.
• Concludes that art-making itself can be a form of pilgrimage — a spiritual and creative journey.

Panel Discussion Highlights

• Transformation: Pilgrimage as a catalyst for both personal and systemic change.
• Intentionality: The openness to being changed defines pilgrimage more than destination does.
• Penitence: Discussion of traditional notions of forgiveness; modern views emphasise reflection over guilt.
• Community & Ecology: Pilgrimage as a way to reconnect people, neighbourhoods, and ecosystems.
• Artistic Expression: Drawing, stitching, ritual, and virtual journeys can also embody pilgrimage.
• Ethics: Acknowledgment of environmental impact and “misguided pilgrimages” (e.g., consumerist or destructive acts).
• Labyrinths & Fractals: Both symbolise a single path of perseverance and inward transformation.

Closing Reflections

• András Molnár: Calls for humility — pilgrims are not superior but seekers; warns against constructing false transcendence.
• Guy Hayward: Emphasises places and practices — engaging meaningfully with sacred sites through creative acts like singing, water rituals, or meditation.
• Kathryn Barush: Highlights art as communion with place and people; wishes all “Buen Camino.”
• Lora Aziz: Summarises the evening in three words — transformation, embodiment, and ‘communitas’ — and invites participants to continue the conversation in future sessions.

The second session in our On Pilgrimage series focused on Sacred Steps: Contemporary pilgrimage, walking art, climate and activism took place on Tuesday 7 April, 2026 and we welcomed Roxana Perez-Mendez of Campo Research Studio, Jonathan Baxter and Jolie Booth of Krya Arts and Pilgrimage for Nature.

A 90-minute panel discussion exploring contemporary pilgrimage — how it intersects with walking, art, climate activism, and our relationship to land. Hosted by Laura Aziz (co-chair), with speakers Jolie Rose, Jonathan Baxter, and Roxana Perez-Mendez.

Jolie Rose shared her journey from a 2018 Extinction Rebellion walk to leading multiple long-distance pilgrimages across the UK. Walking the Michael & Mary ley line (500 miles, solo) became a process of personal healing — through grief, relationship breakdown, and reconnection with the natural world. She went on to lead a group of ~30 walkers to COP26 along the Spine of Albion, holding ceremonies at chakra points with local wisdom keepers, and performing a collaborative piece in Glasgow’s Green Zone. She described the pilgrim as occupying two archetypes: the hermit(carrying inner weight) and the fool (open to everything).

Jonathan Baxter described Pilgrimage for COP26 — a 10-day walk from Dunbar to Glasgow ahead of the summit, with a core group of 20–25 walkers. The three stated aims were: raising awareness of the climate crisis, reflecting on it in relation to communities passed through, and building a community of witness committed to climate justice. The walk was notably bioregional in focus — engaging with post-industrial landscapes, faith communities, and local people — and was accompanied by artworks, community choirs, and a deep time walk. He closed with a quote from the late David Gee emphasising tangible, present-tense hope over grand narratives.

Roxana Perez-Mendez opened with a land acknowledgement and offered the most explicitly political framing. Drawing on decolonial theory (Malcom Ferdinand, Naomi Klein, Edward Glissant), she argued that the ecological crisis is inseparable from colonial history. Her practice with Campo Research Studios uses walking as research and socially engaged performance, prioritising Black, Latin American, Indigenous, and gender-diverse participants. She challenged the audience to distinguish between pilgrims (transformed by the land, accountable to its history) and tourists (consumers who pass through unchanged), and cautioned that pilgrimage can feel radical while leaving underlying power structures intact. “Healing without reckoning is not healing. It’s forgetting.”

Panel Discussion Themes

• Self-transformation vs. structural change — Jonathan asked what “structural change” means in practice; Roxana argued it begins with acknowledging the roots of dispossession, not just personal growth.
• Hospitality and gift economies — both Jolie and Jonathan noted how people from very different backgrounds opened their homes to pilgrims, and how secular climate activists were often surprised by this generosity, rooted in religious and gift-economy traditions.
• Bioregionalism and excluded communities — discussion of how post-industrial communities have been doubly extracted (from labour and from land), and how reconnection often comes through growing food and social enterprise.
• Penance and suffering — Jolie reflected that her hardest walks were the most transformative; Jonathan urged caution around glorifying suffering, preferring the language of humility and joy; Roxana reframed penance as what the walker owes — to the dead, to the displaced, to the land itself.
• The pilgrim as social body — Jonathan described the pilgrim not as a lone individual but as a collective skin moving through landscape, with impermanence as a core insight.

Closing

Lora Aziz wrapped up noting the recurring themes of presence, reciprocity, vulnerability, andsacrifice, and encouraged continued discussion using the comments box at the bottom of the Sacred Steps event page.

Next Steps & Announcements

• Six-month series continues monthly.
• Next event: On creating pilgrimage routes: (May 5).
• Ongoing Pilgrimage Poetry Competition and open call to contribute creative works to the walk · listen · create Pilgrimages Resources archive.

“Creating Pilgrimage Routes” — Walk, Listen, Create Series

The third On Pilgrimage event in the series focussing on Faith-based, radical and community-led pathsand we are delighted to have Conchita Espino, Director of Mar a Mar, the organisation behind the Camino de Costa Rica,  Matthew R Anderson Gatto Chair of Christian Studies, at St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada and author of The Good Walk: Creating New Paths on Traditional Prairie Trails, and Jane Sharkey creator of the Lundy Pilgrimage Trail as guest presenters.

Hosted by Lora Aziz, co-chair of the World Trails Network Arts & Culture Task Force and Annemarie Lopez, from walk · listen · create.

Three Speakers, Three Routes

Conchita Espino — El Camino de Costa Rica A retired World Bank specialist, Conchita and her husband conceived a 280km trail crossing Costa Rica from the Caribbean to the Pacific. Modelled on the Camino de Santiago, it was designed between 2012 and 2018 and opened in 2018. Key priorities included routing through economically marginalised communities that wanted and needed the income, preserving biodiversity, and keeping the trail accessible. It has three pillars: personal transformation, community-led development (deliberately resisting mass tourism), and environmental education through schools along the route.

Matthew Anderson — Community and Political Walks, Canada A Christian Studies professor, Matthew described several routes he has initiated across Canada. His prairie walks followed historic Métis trading trails across largely depopulated land, walking through territory once inhabited by Indigenous nations. These were explicitly political — drawing attention to dispossession and land access. His Montreal-to-Kahnawake walk introduced students to Mohawk territory and its history. A recurring theme was ceremony: asking permission from the land and its people before crossing, including the Indigenous practice of smudging each morning.

Jane Sharkey — Lundy Island Pilgrimage Jane, who lived on the tiny island of Lundy in the Bristol Channel, created a 13km circular day pilgrimage as part of her Fine Art master’s. The route drew on the island’s sacred place names (Knight Templar Rock, Apostle Stones, Virgin Springs) and ended at St Helen’s Church. Her focus was on multi-sensory engagement — encouraging walkers to listen, smell, and feel the landscape rather than simply look at it. She created a passport booklet with prompts, a code of conduct, and prayers from both a vicar and a Jain monk.

Key Themes from the Discussion

• Balancing the new with the existing — all three grappled with how to introduce routes without disrupting communities or land. Conchita described negotiations over a private hanging bridge; Matthew described the diplomacy required to enter Mohawk and Indigenous territories.
• Transformation — the session closed with a question about whether these routes changed their walkers. Responses ranged from physical and emotional challenge (Conchita) to political awakening (Matthew) to embodied attention (Jane). Ali Pretty, who had walked El Camino de Costa Rica, noted that transformation tends to be gradual rather than instant.
• Access and land rights — a lively exchange touched on the tension between the right to roam and Indigenous sovereignty, with the group largely agreeing that ceremony and asking permission offered a meaningful, if imperfect, bridge.

Closing Words

Lora drew out three anchor words from the evening: contemplation (Jane), ceremony (Matthew), and guide (Conchita) — framing pilgrimage not just as movement through space, but as a way of paying attention, making meaning with others, and being led by land and story.

Next Steps & Announcements

• Six-month series continues monthly.
• Next event: Art on the Pilgrim Path Tuesday 2 June
• Ongoing Pilgrimage Poetry Competition and open call to contribute creative works to the walk · listen · create Pilgrimages Resources archive.

Meeting Title: On Pilgrimage – Art on the Pilgrim Path Date: 2 June 2026

Executive Summary

This fourth instalment in the Walk · Listen · Create series, held with the World Trails Network, explored how contemporary artists approach pilgrimage as both physical and artistic practice. The four featured speakers—Kathryn Barush , Roxana Perez-Mendez, William Sharpe, and Clara Gari—each presented perspectives connecting embodied walking to spirituality, art‑making, and community.

Hosted by Lora Aziz, co-chair of the World Trails Network Arts & Culture Task Force and Andrew Stuck, from walk · listen · create.

Key themes included:

• Pilgrimage as Embodied Art: Walking is both the medium and the message—an act that dissolves the boundaries between art, religion, and communal experience.
• Reconstruction & Representation: Pilgrimage can occur through artworks, home‑made shrines, sound, and recreated paths (e.g., Phil Volker’s backyard Camino).
• Teaching & Practice: Roxana Perez‑Mendez described training art students through lived walking experience on the Camino Francés, emphasizing the transformative power of fatigue, repetition, silence, and encounter.
• Historical & Cultural Context: William Sharpe traced how depictions of pilgrims evolved from medieval iconography to modern myth‑making (e.g., U.S. “Pilgrims”), showing that artistic images reveal cultural motives behind pilgrimage.
• Personal and Social Dimensions: Clara Gari contrasted her quiet 1986 Camino—defined by hospitality and solitude—with the modern, tourist‑heavy route; she argued walking itself, not institutional pilgrimage, reshapes human connection and public art practice.
• Community & Solitude: Discussion with Ridha Dhib (translated by Annemarie Lopez) highlighted how host communities and repeated physical exertion create shared transformation (“communion through dust”).
• Concept of “Dissolving”: The session closed on the idea of dissolving barriers—between artist and audience, individual and collective, sacred and secular—and reaffirming pilgrimage as a bodily, connective, and liminal act.

Key Topics Discussed

• Kathryn Barush:
  • Art as contemplative pilgrimage; stationary or “mental” journeys through manuscripts and maps.
  • Case studies—Phil Volker’s backyard Camino, Bhakti Mayama’s cigar‑box shrines, British Pilgrimage Trust’s sung routes, and Kara Ambrosio’s travel zines—all demonstrate art as surrogate pilgrimage linking physical and spiritual worlds.
• Roxana Perez‑Mendez:
  • Pilgrimage = artistic medium.
  • Walking teaches through the body: silence, fatigue, endurance produce revelation and awareness.
  • Her UNC students create works from direct embodied experience rather than representation.
• William Sharpe:
  • Historical “look” of pilgrims in art—from medieval staff‑and‑shell figures to metaphorical journeys like The Pilgrim’s Progress.
  • Warned of “doing the right deed for the wrong reason”—pilgrimage as ideology, colonization, or political myth.
• Clara Gari:
  • Comparative reflection on early vs. modern Camino.
  • Shift from spiritual hospitality to economic tourism; still, walking preserves introspection and transformation.
  • Advocated for walking as collective art practice in her Grand Tour of 300 km with multidisciplinary artists.

Panel Discussion & Contributions

• Themes: dissolution of artwork boundaries; art as service to the divine or community; bodily knowledge as essential spirituality.
• Ridha Dhib: reflected on social exchange along the Camino—hosts share in pilgrim stories, forming a “reverse” pilgrimage; physical repetition strips social masks.
• Kathryn Barush: expanded on communitas—shared presence across time and space, where even solitary walking connects to past and future pilgrims.
• Audience Q&A:
  • Ann De Forest raised ambulatory design in churches as “micro‑pilgrimage”; discussion linked sacred architecture to rest, reflection, and sensory learning.

Conclusions / Takeaways

• Central Insight: Walking itself—not the destination—constitutes both spiritual and artistic transformation.
• Embodiment: The body is inseparable from spiritual practice or creative process.
• Community through Travel: Pilgrimage generates communitas—shared memory and mutual recognition—across time and culture.
• Artistic Implication: Contemporary walking art reclaims pilgrimage as participatory, process‑based, and inclusive.
• Closing reflection (Lora Aziz): “Dissolve” captures the evening’s essence—dissolving boundaries, myths, ownership, and ego to create thin spaces of reconnection.

Next Steps & Announcements: 

• Six-month series continues monthly
• Stories from the Road Tuesday 7 July – continuation of the On Pilgrimage series by walk · listen · create and the World Trails Network.
• Ongoing Pilgrimage Poetry Competition and open call to contribute creative works to the walk · listen · create Pilgrimages Resources archive.