Welcome everyone to our first newsletter of the 4 year Walking Arts and Local Communities (WALC) project part funded by the EU. WALC is a collaboration between seven partners, each of whom have been involved for more than a decade in walking art: curating, producing and assisting others to create a diversity of experiences on foot.

Project lead, Professor Yannis Ziogas speaking at a recent online Confluence event, explains the aspiration for the WALC project:

“The whole spirit of this process is to work with two concepts, one is walking and the other is communities. The concept of communities is important, especially in these turbulent times in which we all live, and especially for communities that are on the fringe of some danger or some threat internally or externally. So the main aspect of the WALC project was to introduce, through walking methods, means to allow these communities to be empowered, and open to the possibility of healing - at least to reflect and deal with the difficulties.  This by itself is a very important art experiment, because it takes walking away from what we call an individual or art world oriented practice, and it takes it there where art has always been, which is in society. It is taking away art from the main art venues and it's getting it to areas where things are at least challenging to be realised.”

It is a real honour and privilege for a city-dweller like me, an educated white resident of cosmopolitan London, to be involved in such an aspirational project working with marginalised regional or remote rural communities in different countries in Europe. London is a magnet for major artworld exhibitions as well as a city that attracts a diverse range of people who bring their art to London’s streets and neighbourhoods. Opening this month are two key exhibitions that magnify the importance and value of walking art.

The V&A Museum of Art and Design is hosting an exhibition celebrating 40 years of supermodel Naomi Campbell on fashion’s catwalk.  “No one walks like Naomi Campbell. She walks in the footsteps of Black women who have stepped towards freedom, marched in resistance, twirled in joy and stomped as a spiritual practice. On the catwalk she is rooted in a long tradition of dignified defiance. She walks like a warrior and navigates the territory of high fashion with supernatural flair.” writes Micheala Angela Davis in a personal appreciation of Naomi Campbell’s signature stride. Campbell herself often quotes that had it not been for her falling off 12 inch high platform shoes designed by Vivienne Westwood while on the catwalk in a show in 1993, her career might not have been quite so stratospheric.

Across town at the Barbican Art Gallery, in the City of London, there is a new exhibition of the recent work of Francis Alys, the Belgian architect turned walking artist. Twenty years ago, he was commissioned by Artangel to make work in London, which became known as Seven Walks 2004-5. Some people may question whether what he was doing could have been called art. One of the Seven Walks involved walking beside railings with a wooden stick, with the walker striking the railings as they passed. Another was where in turn, individual office workers carried a painting home on their commute to and from work. A third was pushing a block of ice around the Covent Garden market on a warm sunny day.

Whatever your reactions may be to a catwalk strutting supermodel or to an artist pushing a block of melting ice, both exhibitions represent walking art.  

The WALC project as it is called has an ambition to create an international centre of Walking Art on the edge of the Greater Prespa lake in north west Greece. Over the last decade Professor Yannis Ziogas has been taking students from the local University of Western Macedonia, on walks across the contested spaces of this often conflicted territory. The WALC project aims to develop a series of processes, by which to encourage, develop and broaden the awareness of Walking Art. We won’t necessarily be walking with an artwork or strutting a catwalk, but we will be walking together with local communities in Belgium, France, Greece, Portugal and Spain as well as encouraging others throughout the world to take part through online platforms managed by walk · listen · create.

Already, several WALC cafes have taken place, in which artists meet with peers to discuss their work, as well as two key on the ground events, The Walking Body  hosted by the University of Minho, in Guimaraes in northern Portugal and Bivouac Metaverse hosted by Gigacircus in southern France, in which immigrant refugee artists from Northern Africa joined local residents to explore how to break down barriers and celebrate a creative temporary community through walking art, in short “walking together”.

In the words of artistic coordinator Geert Vermeire: “This is the launch of a project focusing on collective and cooperative practices, highlighting the importance of collaborative group processes in walking arts, exploring parallel pathways for sharing ideas and creativity.

Amid the urgency of contemporary challenges, co-creation through walking practices acknowledges that no single entity can provide all the answers alone. By tapping into communal and collective intelligence and aspiring towards collective knowledge, WALC aims to become a source of hope in addressing the complex and urgent issues of our time.”. 

As such the WALC project embarks, advocating for a structural approach recognizing the deep benefits of collaboration in walking arts and the endeavour to (re)build the commons, in a creative process that respects walking artists’ unique expertise, sharing the responsibility and freedom of determining a collective future.

Want to find out how you can be involved in the WALC project, and at the same time discover the creative practice of one of Mexico's celebrated performance artists? Join our free Confluence event online on Tuesday.

 We acknowledge the support of the EU Creative Europe Cooperation grant program in the framework of the European project WALC (Walking Arts and Local Community).

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.

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