Is walking meant to get us somewhere, or is it about being on the way together?

On Tuesday mornings, Beveren’s market square slowly fills up. The weekly market is more than a place where vegetables, cheese or flowers change hands. It forms a social landscape where people meet, pause for conversation, and time itself seems to slow between the market stalls.

As we walk across the square, someone gently taps us on the shoulder. A mischievous smile appears. It is A., out with a group from De Bron. We start talking. The support worker smiles as the conversation unfolds so naturally. There is no distance, no awkwardness. Only a brief encounter between people whose paths cross.

Anyone who visits the market regularly will recognise the scene. Residents of De Bron and De Stroom are often part of the street scene. Their presence has become interwoven with the weekly ritual of the market. De Bron supports adults with an intellectual disability, while De Stroom supports people with an acquired brain injury or a degenerative cognitive condition. Often, you cannot immediately see the struggle someone faces each day. Behind an ordinary walk there may be a constant exercise in balance, concentration or endurance.

This raises a fundamental question about walking. We often regard it as the most natural form of movement, while for many people it is precisely a continuous confrontation with their own bodies, public space and the gaze of others.

For someone who uses a wheelchair or walking frame, small obstacles can grow into insurmountable barriers. A tree root, a narrow gate, an unpaved path, a missing bench or an inaccessible toilet can suddenly determine the limits of your freedom. In nature reserves, this often creates a tension between accessibility and conservation: not every path can be adapted without affecting the landscape itself.

Yet the greatest barriers are by no means always visible.

Chronic pain, autism, acquired brain injury, long-term fatigue or psychological vulnerability cannot be read from someone’s face. For these walkers, a journey is less about distance or speed than about energy, predictability, sensitivity to stimuli and a sense of safety. Yet many walking groups still set out from an implicit norm: an average walking pace, a fixed route and a taken-for-granted level of physical fitness. Anyone who differs from that norm soon falls behind, feels guilty about holding others up or eventually drops out altogether.

Behind this lies a broader social reflex. People with disabilities are still too often seen through the lens of what they cannot do, rather than the ways in which they do participate in the world. The word ‘disability’ therefore risks overshadowing the person. Yet behind every body lies a life story: sometimes beginning at birth, sometimes after an accident, an illness or an unexpected turn of fate.

More and more artists, philosophers and researchers are therefore asking a different question. Not: Can this person walk? But: What form of walking makes encounter possible?

From that perspective, walking becomes an exercise in autonomy and trust. It is not the kilometres covered that matter, but the possibility of reconnecting with one’s own body, with the surroundings and with others. A short walk through a green environment can reduce stress, strengthen well-being and ease feelings of loneliness, provided that the environment invites rather than excludes.

This also changes our definition of walking. It is no longer a uniform activity, but a multifaceted practice in which different bodies, speeds and rhythms can coexist. Slow walking is then no longer a shortcoming, but another way of seeing. A different pace often brings a richer attentiveness to the landscape, to details that would otherwise remain unnoticed and to the people with whom we share the journey.

Walking as a Shared Practice

With this in mind, the collaboration between Spanish artist Alba Sauleda and the participants of De Bron and De Stroom during Made of Walking (September 2026) takes on a special significance, given the remarkable involvement of staff and residents. Sauleda investigates walking as an artistic practice in which mental well-being, care and encounter are central. Together, they can explore how different bodies continually reshape the same landscape, how slowness makes new forms of attention possible and how a walk can grow into a space in which diverse forms of mobility do not exclude but instead complement one another.

Accessibility then proves to be more than a technical intervention or an adapted path. It arises in the way people move together, wait for one another, listen to one another and recognise each other’s pace.

Perhaps that is ultimately the most essential meaning of walking. Not so much arriving somewhere, but sharing a path full of encounters. Not the distance covered, but the space that emerges between people along the way.