Pilgrimage resources
Beginning in March 2026, we are running a series of online events in collaboration with the World Trails Network that will focus on pilgrimage. We are keen to gather suggestions for a resource list to support these online events – these could be books, artwork, performances, personal pilgrimages and walking art.
In this collection
Highlights
Stories from the Pilgrim’s Road
Walking writing, sound, photography and archives Every road a pilgrim travels is pre-loaded with stories, and each pilgrim’s journey is a story in itself. In this episode of the On Pilgrimage series we are investigating stories, and the media through which they are told. Working alongside the World Trails Network (WTN), a community of trail management and
Sacred Steps
Contemporary pilgrimage, walking art, climate and activism Modern day pilgrimage is growing in popularity – every year numbers grow along some of the oldest and most traditional pilgrimage routes. Pilgrimage has been practised for millennia and is shared by all the world’s major religions, on every continent – there isn’t a day when a pilgrimage
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Poetry Pilgrims
We are delighted to announce the winner and runner-up in the first chapter of our year-long On Pilgrimage poetry competition. Each quarter beginning in February this year, we have a new theme and new volunteer judges, and our first quarter theme of Solvitur Ambulando was chosen by judge Electra Rhodes. She was joined in the
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Surfacing through Rhythm
In the UK, I expand on the founding purpose of Mary Stevens Park, Stourbridge, as a mingling space for people from different backgrounds by including the more-than-human. I assign each solar term a territorial ‘segment,’ equalising time and place.
Books
Walking pieces
Alien Staff
Alien Staff (1992–93) by Krzysztof Wodiczko is an electronic staff with a monitor, speaker, and display of personal documents, carried like a biblical shepherd’s staff or a 17th-century bourgeois walking stick. It allows immigrants to share their stories publicly, fostering dialogue, empathy, and challenging cultural prejudices.
Transatlantic Walk
Transatlantic Walk was a performative project in which François Morelli carried a hollow fiberglass sculpture shaped like a charred human torso while walking through cities in Europe and the U.S., periodically blowing air into it or filling it with water. The project was documented through photographs, sketches, journals, slides, and video.
Articles on WLC
On Pilgrimage: what we have learned so far
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
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The Art of Being on Location
Recently, we integrated the OVERHEAR API into our Museum of Walking, making it easy for creators using OVERHEAR to include their work into our archives. Kibriya Mehrban talked about her experience as part of the app’s core team. Now, Tom, founder of the app, follows up on Kibriya’s article. My name is Tom. I’m the founder and co-director of
The good in the bad: 1000 euros for the winner of the SWS Awards 2026
For years now, the news cycle has been saturated with images of war. The current assault on Iran by Israel and the United States brings with it the familiar rhetoric of inevitability, escalation, and abstraction. But though we might be in position to close our eyes to the literal horrors of war, violent conflict is never abstract. Just this
• Poetry on Pilgrimage
We have been on the ‘look-out’ for a poetry competition or prize that is exclusively focused on walking and to date we haven’t found one (apart from our own). The poetry universe is huge, there are prizes awarded for hundreds of themes, and many of the more general ones have chosen walking as a theme
• Articles elsewhere
Walking Secular Pilgrimage
In October 2016, aged 53, and needing a change, I stepped out of my front door in Edinburgh for an adventure. First visiting relatives by train in the New Forest, England then it was a boat from Portsmouth across the Bay of Biscay to Santander where I started walking. I exchanged Shiatsu for hospitality, as … Continue reading Walking Secular Pilgrimage
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Events
Art on the Pilgrim Path
Artists working along routes and in landscapes Art has been entwined with pilgrimage from the outset, in iconography and relics, object attribution and travel souvenirs, music and folklore, and more recently in walking performances. Does a pilgrimage route become an open-air studio exhibiting the pilgrim experience? Working alongside the World Trails Network (WTN), a community of trail
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Faith-based, radical and community-led paths Today pilgrimage destinations and routes are not limited by faith alone, some not even constrained by an existing route, but carving a new route drawing attention to contested sites and issues sometimes of global significance. Art has been entwined with pilgrimage from the outset, in iconography and relics, object attribution
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• Pilgrimage today
Modern day pilgrimage is growing in popularity – every year numbers grow along some of the oldest and most traditional pilgrimage routes. Pilgrimage has been practised for millennia and is shared by all the world’s major religions, on every continent – there isn’t a day when a pilgrimage is being undertaken. In days gone by,
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