26 May, 2024

We recently launched our annual poetry and flash fiction writing competition, on the theme of "Walking Together". This was chosen by our current writers-in-residence, Shani Cadwallender (poetry) and Amelia Hodsdon (prose), whom you may have come across as they've together hosted a couple of popular online events for us called Finding a Place. So how did they become our writers-in-residence, you may ask? Well that's part of the prize for winning our annual writing competition! Other prizes include cash and artwork, so why not give it a go? Write something yourself on the theme of "Walking Together".

And who knows, from this newsletter you might just pick up some ideas. My fascination is if characters from different time periods, or from fiction, could have met and walked together, what might have they have talked about? What Dorothy might have to say to Cinderella about the experiences of wearing the right footwear for walking the yellow brick road. Or could Inspector Morse and Sherlock Holmes be wandering the streets together, swapping ideas about how to track down a murderer. You get the idea...

This week you can join a creative writing workshop run by our former writer-in-residence, Cheryl Markosky, in which she is going to be providing prompts about women walking, drawn from the conversation she had with Dr Kerri Andrews at the inaugural Way Makers Salon, as well as from other women-walker writers. Of all the famous women writers, whom would you have wished to have walked with?

Last week, reading the paper, I discovered that there's a house, made up of two semi-detached homes on the very edge of London - it actually straddles the boundary between the county of Essex and the London Metropolitan region, with one home in Essex and one in London - so what? Well if you happen to be living in the house in London, your children get free school meals, and anyone over 60 in your household gets a Freedom Pass travel card, that means you can travel anywhere in London (over 2,000 square kilometres) for free. While the family in the semi- in Essex don't get either of these benefits. I wonder what the residents would talk about on a walk together?

Our EU funded Walking Art and Local Communities project has focused on France in the last couple of weeks, with the Gigacircus collective offering an art residency to refugees. The collective created a first prototype of a bivouac audiovisual installation. A place where the local communities, people in exile and from countries all over the World could join an hybrid online and physical space of dialogue without borders. You can hear a brief report at the free Confluence event on Wednesday evening. The Confluence is hosted by our Catalonian partners at Nau Côclea, so, also presenting will be three artists who have walked together on an El Grand Tour, the nomadic residency conceived by Nau Côclea director Clara Gari. Remember to sign up for the Confluence to find out how you can be involved in this year's El Grand Tour in August.

WALK, BEYOND BORDERS

Parallel to developing ‘Hospitalité en ActionS’ an art process connecting artists with refugees in western France, Gigacircus devote their art to the ritual fight of the Raramuris in the Sierra Tarahumara, and to Mongolian nomadic shepherds. They are keen to hear from artists and others who are engaged in the topic of borders, migration and exile in their artistic practice. As they say "Let's join forces to promote peace and cultural diversity in the world. Hasta la Victoria!" To contact Gigacircus use the contact form from here.

Keep walking, get writing!

Andrew Stuck Co-founder of walk · listen · create

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