When our path meets the sun
The heatwave in Europe has changed the way many of us walk. Where is the shade? What time should we leave? Should we go out at all? Heat makes the relationship between body and world undeniable.
I grew up in Australia, where heat is something you take seriously. People become delirious in the outback, they get lost, they die of thirst. We walked in the mornings, before the sun was above the trees, carrying sticks to tap the path ahead as a warning to snakes out looking for water. In Sydney, I remember walking to work on a scorching summer's day where the only shade was the shadow cast by the monorail. Everyone moved in single file along the thin strip of shadow, the city reorganising itself around a narrow line of liveability.
Mild weather allows us the fiction that we can walk through a landscape, observing it but somehow untouched by it. Extreme heat makes us porous. Sweat, sunburn, and thirst blur the boundary between self and world.
Anthropologist Tim Ingold describes humans not as beings moving across a landscape but as creatures immersed within a world of weather, air, and materials. In a heatwave, this stops being philosophy.
Marie-Anne Lerjen's Sweat Mapping, our 2024 Marŝarto runner-up, makes this literal. On a five-hour summer walk from Girona to Banyoles, she collected sweat from participants through a pipette and traced the region's water systems on glass, bodies and topography merging. Sweat as a record of contact.
Once, walking near Ouarzazate on the edge of the Sahara, I had the sensation of dissolving into the landscape. In the heat, the pink-gold light, I was becoming atoms, like grains of sand, as if there was no clear line between where the desert ended and my own skin began.
Perhaps that is the radical lesson of walking in the heat. We are not merely passing through the world. We are part of it, being weathered by it, and yes, helping to create it. That idea runs through our upcoming events, from artists taking their work onto the road, to the Prespa writers reflecting on journeys around the world, to pilgrims discovering that they not only write their paths, but are also written by them.
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Writer, walker, digital storyteller, psychogeographer
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Placecloud
Researchers use Placecloud to mark sites of significance with short podcasts.
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Do not miss this!
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This article is available in French and Spanish. On May 30, Gigacircus presented the Festival of Hospitality in Villefagnan, bringing to a meaningful close the French hosting phase of the WALC project, Walking Arts & Local Communities. Before the dinner concert held in the village community hall, more than eighty resid... Keep reading
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2026-06-30 18:00 UTC
· Online
Conceived by Clara Gari over the last twelve years, El Grand Tour has explored what happens when art leaves the exhibition hall, the stage or the auditorium and takes to the road. Clara Gari invites you to Grand Tour 2026. “In 2026, we return to three territories that have marked us deeply: the Eastern Pyrenees, Keep reading
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2026-07-07 18:00 UTC
· Online
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)... Keep reading
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Free for supporting members, open to everyone
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2026-07-07 18:00 UTC
· Online
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)... Keep reading
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Submit your work and win
What have you been working on? Submit your work to the world’s largest archive of walking pieces. If your work is recent, it is automatically eligible for the Sound Walk September or Marŝarto Awards, meaning you stand to win cold, hard, cash in the process.
Latest podcast episodes
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It’s been 18 years since Andrew Stuck met Canadian Barbara Lounder at the Banff Centre in The Rockies at a walking and art residency where Talking Walking podcasts ... Start listening
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In the ruins of an upstate New York cement factory, Blake and New York Times best-selling author Dylan Thuras wander toward a mysterious “document storage house,” d... Start listening
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Stephen “Sulli” Sullivan shares all the wild twists and turns of co-founding Cloudveil in 1997, then launching Stio in 2011. We dive into some of his most significa... Start listening
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Upcoming events
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2026-06-30 18:00 UTC
· Online
Conceived by Clara Gari over the last twelve years, El Grand Tour has explored what happens when art leaves the exhibition hall, the stage or the auditorium and tak... Keep reading
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3 - 5 Jul, 2026 UTC
· Altogether Otherwise, Hanover Street, Manchester, UK
Expect to see drawings, photographic prints, sound pieces, and artefacts made during the collaborative series of walks MAY BE ON THE MOORS. Keep reading
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2026-07-06 21:00 UTC
· Online
Join us in celebrating the first anniversary of the Walking Writers of Prespa. We are a collective of walking artists and writers who first gathered at a long table... Keep reading
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2026-07-07 18:00 UTC
· Online
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 e... Keep reading
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7 - 18 Jul, 2026 UTC
· University of East London, University Way, London, UK
Clare Qualmann's solo exhibition: Walk this Way will be held at the University of East London, in the Between People gallery. Exhibition opens 7th July and ends on ... Keep reading
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2026-07-10 09:30 UTC
· Peckham Rye Park, 34 Straker's Rd, London SE15 3UA, UK
Women who would like to explore an emerging walking arts practice are invited to participate in a 1-hour to 90-minute somatic stroll + reflection (approx. 15 m... Keep reading
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17 Jul - 27 Aug, 2026 UTC
· 39 Nash Street, Gympie Queensland, Australia
WALKING ART NOW, the third exhibition for Australian Walking Artists Inc., features the works of thirty-two of our artists at the Gympie Regional Gallery. This is a... Keep reading
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WALC
Walking Arts & Local Communities (WALC) is an artistic cooperation project, co-funded by the European Union, Creative Europe, starting in January 2024 for four years. With seven partners from five countries, WALC establishes an International Center for Artistic Research and Practice of Walking Arts, in Prespa, Greece, at the border with Albania and North Macedonia, backed up by an online counterpart in the format of a digital platform for walking arts.
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This article is available in French and Spanish. On May 30, Gigacircus presented the Festival of Hospitality in Villefagnan, bringing to a meaningful close the Fren... Keep reading
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This article is available in French and English. On El 30 de mayo, Gigacircus presentó en Villefagnan la «Fiesta de la Hospitalidad», poniendo un cierre significati... Keep reading
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This article is available in English and Spanish. Le 30 mai, Gigacircus a présenté à Villefagnan la « Fête de l’Hospitalité » pour clore de façon significative l’ac... Keep reading
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2026-06-30 18:00 UTC
· Online
Conceived by Clara Gari over the last twelve years, El Grand Tour has explored what happens when art leaves the exhibition hall, the stage or the auditorium and tak... Keep reading
|
|
2026-07-06 21:00 UTC
· Online
Join us in celebrating the first anniversary of the Walking Writers of Prespa. We are a collective of walking artists and writers who first gathered at a long table... Keep reading
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From our network
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Highlights from the Inspiring Action LAC Workshop in Santo Domingo In a region where walking and cycling are often overlooked in planning processes despite being es... Keep reading
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Radical Stroud day out on Thursday July 2nd: a look at the Dean Forest Railway and a reflection on the 1926 General Strike in the Forest of Dean and on the GWR. Nin... Keep reading
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Hello. At 17:00 today I am reading some of my walking poetry (for 15 minutes) as part of a 24hr charity Readathon at Jesmond Library. Donations are split 50:50 betw... Keep reading
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This article is available in French and Spanish. On May 30, Gigacircus presented the Festival of Hospitality in Villefagnan, bringing to a meaningful close the Fren... Keep reading
|
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This article is available in French and English. On El 30 de mayo, Gigacircus presentó en Villefagnan la «Fiesta de la Hospitalidad», poniendo un cierre significati... Keep reading
|
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This article is available in English and Spanish. Le 30 mai, Gigacircus a présenté à Villefagnan la « Fête de l’Hospitalité » pour clore de façon significative l’ac... Keep reading
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I’ll be part of a panel discussion on “Stories from the Pilgrim’s Road” that will take place on July 7th.https://walklistencreate.org/walkingevent/stories-from-the-... Keep reading
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A short film made after walks in Glasgow, Scotland between Queen Street Station and the Glasgow Woimens Library Keep reading
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Stuff we found
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In Charleroi, the photographer is showing “Île Brésil,” the fruit of ten years spent wandering on foot, by bus and by motorbike through the outskirts of the country... Keep reading
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