30 Oct, 2022

My enthusiasm for walking, walking art and sound walks in particular, is driven in part by an insatiable curiosity of whom and what has gone before. What of those intriguing routes, or interesting pieces that are no longer easily accessible? Those walking pieces that were created for only a festival or a one-off event or sound walks built on technology that has now become redundant or has been superseded.

I recall saving up pocket money to purchase vinyl records, tape cassette, and then came CD, CD Roms and DVDs all of which have been superseded by streaming. We are now in an age where digital resources can be reached in seconds and often, consumed or dismissed as quickly.

Here in the UK we have the most remarkable history of radio broadcasting -  the BBC is celebrating its 100th anniversary - and it keeps revealing jewels from its extensive archives, that prick the memory.  However, not all was archived or saved in those pre-digital days, and there’s a new band of amateur audio archeologists who are sifting through home tape recordings of shows that were only ever live broadcasts.  One such archival discovery is what is affectionately called the BBC Genome project - Google it if you haven’t encountered it before. It’s a remarkable resource if you, like me have a penchant for radio or audio.

Since September 1923, the BBC has been publishing broadcasting schedules in a weekly magazine known as the “Radio Times” - this in itself is remarkable. Each issue listed every programme that would be broadcast in the following week.  This huge archive has now been digitised and is called the BBC Genome. So you can search the entire schedule history of hundreds of thousands of programmes made by the BBC - not just radio, but latterly TV as well.   So should you be searching your attic, or helping your parents or grandparents to reduce their clutter, and happen to  encounter a pile of tapes of the radio programmes from the past, you can look at the BBC Genome project to help you source what you have found.

A good number of these once-lost programmes are now being made available through BBC Sounds, so which of those programmes might have been about walking or walking art? As you can imagine there a fair few,  for which I am not going to select any here in this newsletter but I am going to offer up a regular blog post on the walk · listen · create website, drawing on those that you can still have a listen to.

On Tuesday our Walking Writers' Salon guest, is poet and chronicler Peter Finch who has been sleuthing his home city of Cardiff all his life. He is an authority on both the solid and the ephemeral edges of Cardiff, and we are delighted to have him as our guest on Tuesday to talk about his approach to writing, and how he has become a literary entrepreneur, as well as discussing his recent psychogeographic work called Edging the City. Scroll down to read more.

Keep walking!

Co-founder of walk · listen · create

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01 Nov · Tue · 19:00 (UTC) · Online
Poet and psycho-geographer Peter Finch is November's Walking Writers Salon guest, talking about “Edging the City” - his new collection inspired by his walks along the boundaries of the City of Cardiff. Keep reading

Upcoming events

01 Nov · Tue · 19:00 (UTC) · Online
Poet and psycho-geographer Peter Finch is November's Walking Writers Salon guest, talking about “Edging the City” - his new collection inspired by his walks along t... Keep reading
03 Nov · Thu · 17:00 (UTC) · Online
Join this one hour online walk with the Pip Decks Community, to gain space to breathe, be mindful, connect, chat, and laugh. Keep reading
04 Nov · Fri · 09:30 (UTC) · Online
Join the walking club Join us for a live virtual walk guided by our mindset coach from wherever you are in the world. All you need is your phone & the zoom app t... Keep reading
4 - 6 Nov, 2022 · Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
40 minute circular walks from Edinburgh's Sumerhall arts centre, involving readings of poems specially commissioned to respond to Keep reading
04 Nov · Fri · 12:30 (UTC) · Ulster University, York Street, Belfast BT15 1ED, UK
Enjoy a relaxed dander and explore the sound environment of Belfast City Centre. Learn some basic principles of noise and how noisy environments affect our health a... Keep reading
05 Nov · Sat · 13:00 (UTC) · Ulster University, York Street, Belfast BT15 1ED, UK
A walking tour of the Cathedral Quarter (Belfast’s Cultural District) with opportunities to explore art galleries, sites of urban art and to create portable artwork... Keep reading
11 - 13 Nov, 2022 · Cheese & Grain, Justice Lane, Frome, UK
Frome's annual Walking Festival brings together walks on various topics from history, environmental, countryside and more. Keep reading

From our network

Dear Friend, I am writing to extend my immense gratitude for your support of Anabella Lenzu/DanceDrama over these last 16 years! 2022 was generous and exciting year... Keep reading
Aux premiers jours du numérique ultra mobile, des enregistreurs de poches, des cartes SD et disques durs quasi invisibles, la tentation fut grande de dégainer les m... Keep reading
Day 934 - Selection and 1.5 km drawing.Hopeful and 2.7 km drawing. Keep reading
The bench on the hill has a name upon it, etched onto a small plaque. It tells the passing walker how someone loved this place, capturing the love and displaying i... Keep reading
Day 933 - Unsettled and 3.8 km drawing. Keep reading
Autumn 2022 I have been involved in a project devised and documented by Kel Portman. A curator on this Walking the Land project, his initial invitation set off a ch... Keep reading
I love beetles, bugs, and other insects, most creepy crawlies. In another life maybe I would’ve been an entomologist, specialising in photographing them all really ... Keep reading

Stuff we found

Rather than just moving from A to B, think about your surroundings and the wider ramifications of your walk Source: Giant steps: why walking in nature is good for m... Keep reading
The streets of the Colombian capital are awash with eye-catching art. But this is far more than just decoration, with designs rooted in identity and offering an all... Keep reading
Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign Source: World’s Fastest Shoes Promise to Increase Walking Speed by 250% Keep reading
When three siblings hike the Camino de Santiago, the fact that one has Down’s syndrome makes some things tricky, but the whole trip far more rewarding Source: A les... Keep reading

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