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The Art of Walking
We are delighted to have William Sharpe join us as our Café guest. This time last year, his book on The Art of Walking: a history in 100 images was published to wide acclaim. So how did he come to choose which images best represented the art of walking, and what did he choose to leave out, and why?
• When a Walking Artist is a Renegade Guide
A walk · listen · cafe with Saira Niazi Towards the end of 2024, during a highly contentious election season, writer, guide and founder of Living London, Saira Niazi, spent two months in the US (New York and San Francisco) developing a research project on tour guiding. Attending various walking tours and community events, exploring
• • Renegade Guides Handbook
The Renegade Guides Handbook, a new resource created with and for walking guides, is now live and available to download for free from Saira Niazi‘s Living London website. Alternatively, you can purchase a physical copy on her online bookshop.. The handbook is filled with practical advice, reflections, case studies, stories, ideas and a manifesto. I am sure it will be of
• When Craft becomes Art
Video recording of a Café hosted by Ali Pretty, walking artist, community activist and founding artistic director of the 2025 Beach of Dreams coastal art festival that will bring a festival of banner art, sculpture, performance and storytelling to the coastline of Britain. She asks “when does craft become art?“, and to this café has
+1 WALK
Slow Down, Wake Up, and Connect at 1-3 Miles per Hour A transformative collection of essays on the power of walking to connect with ourselves, each other, and nature itself. In 2010, Jonathon Stalls and his blue heeler husky mix began their 242-day walk across the United States, relying on each other and the kindness
Walking Statues
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
• A lively and thought-provoking tour of the intertwined histories of art and walking
“A broad-ranging book [that] has something for every rambler.”―Benjamin Riley, New Criterion
What does a walk look like? In the first book to trace the history of walking images from cave art to contemporary performance, William Chapman Sharpe reveals that a depicted walk is always more than a matter of simple steps. Whether sculpted in stone, painted on a wall, or captured on film, each detail of gait and dress, each stride and gesture has a story to tell, for every aspect of walking is shaped by social practices and environmental conditions.
From classical statues to the origins of cinema, from medieval pilgrimages to public parks and the first footsteps on the moon, walking has engendered a vast visual legacy intertwined with the path of Western art. The path includes Romantic nature-walkers and urban flâneurs, as well as protest marchers and cell-phone zombies. It features works by artists such as Botticelli, Raphael, Claude Monet, Norman Rockwell, Agnès Varda, Maya Lin, and Pope.L. In 100 chronologically arranged images, this book shows how new ways of walking have spurred new means of representation, and how walking has permeated our visual culture ever since humans began to depict themselves in art. Published by Yale. £25 UK for hardcover. Published April 2023.
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