We might think of the great explorers, pilgrims, artists, wanderers, or long-distance travellers on foot, who crossed continents and left their mark on history. Yet many Indigenous and non-Western traditions might suggest that the question itself misses the point. They emphasize the path, the community, and the relationships that emerge through walking. Walking becomes a practice of connection; with ancestors, landscapes, waters, animals, plants, stories, and future generations.

Among Aboriginal peoples of Australia, walking takes place through Songlines: ancient pathways that are simultaneously stories, maps, laws, and cosmologies. To walk a Songline is to renew, again and again, the continuity of the pathway and the relationships it sustains. Similar approaches can be found in Māori hīkoi, Andean pilgrimages to sacred mountains, Indigenous trail networks across North America, and Sámi migration routes. Across these traditions, movement is less about the walker than about caring for a living network of relationships.

Over the past month, my own life has become something of such a network. I travelled almost continuously, moving from The Walking Assembly in Catalonia, walking with the river Muga, to the Fête de l'Hospitalité in Villefagnan, walking with refugees and local communities, and then on to the WALKING Symposium in Zurich, where we shared sometimes challenging and provocative reflections on thinking in motion, culminating in the final sessions of the WALC (Walking Arts and Local Communites) Online Course, dedicated precisely to walking as a practice of relating, commoning, and future-making. This journey concluded today ​​with a warm and thoughtful exchange with nearly twenty members of the Australian Walking Artists, reflecting on how the conversations, practices, and spirit of the Walking Assembly might flow onward into a Sydney Walking Arts Encounters in May next year.

From the river Muga to the village of Villefagnan, from the peri-urban landscapes of Zurich to the online space of the WALC course and the Australian Walking Artists, I kept hearing that  the home that walk · listen · create provides as a place of meeting, exchange, and return is deeply appreciated by many walking artists.

After all, these communities do not emerge out of nowhere. They are patiently built through relationships that continue long after the walk itself has ended. Seen through this lens, the Grand Tour, developed by Clara Gari in Catalonia and one of WALC's foundational projects, takes on a deeper significance.

To describe it as a participatory art walk feels somehow insufficient. It is a moving community, a temporary commons, and a practice of collective care and attention. Each year, artists walk for a month alongside participants, sharing stories, performances, conversations, meals, observations, and moments of encounter. The upcoming WALC Confluence, When Art Takes to the Road, hosted by Clara Gari, is inspired precisely by this experience. 

Within WALC, the Grand Tour occupies a special place. It is not simply one project among many. It embodies one of the most important lessons WALC has to offer. Walking arts are not merely about movement through space. They are about cohabitation, collective care, and temporary community.

And in that sense, the answer to the question posed at the beginning, which, let me be honest, was little more than a playful piece of clickbait and was never really meant to be answered in the first place, may nevertheless be surprisingly simple.

The greatest walker of all time never walks alone. 

Perhaps that is also what walk · listen · create is about.

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