The Tour of All Tours 
A creative review of guided tours worldwide and thinkpad for art and tour projects. Review requests welcomed.
Most recent articles
Congregation – a sound guided walk and audio composition
Congregation is a word I usually associate with Christianity: the congregation go to the church to celebrate mass. This was a different sort of congregation: a coming together of people carrying metallic balls through the streets of Macau. &...
The Japanese Interval Walk
The tours that I tend to write about tend to be about something. That is to say, they have a subject, a route, a way of navigating you along it and something to impart along the way. That's pretty standard. There is, however, another angle I haven't pa...
Make China Great Again Tour
The US has its MAGA movement, lead by their current president, which might be described as playing to a myth of national revival. I'm not interested here to what extent that is hyperbole, I simply want to start by noting how powerful a force it is. Sim...
Ways To Wander: Google the name…
I was on the lookout for tours to take and, coming up a blank in my local vicinity, I thought it better to take matters into my own hand. I looked in the book Ways To Wander which is a collection of proposals for walks, the majority of which come from ...
The Beijing Tour of All Tours: Video Documentation
There is not a great deal of video documentation of The Tour of All Tours: you had to be there to see it, basically. But, over time, some bits and pieces do come together and this is one of those. This video was made for the exhibition On Ho...
An Aquatic Themed Tour of Reclamation Street, Hong Kong
Reclamation Street on the Kowloon Peninsula is built on land extended into the sea and runs about one mile north to south. This performance involved walking from the southern end of the street to the northern end of it obeying one basic rule. Thi...
The Golden Tour of Nantougucheng Shenzhen – video
The full-length video is now here of a tour that very nearly didn't happen. This one was destined to be stopped like the tour of Shanghai but I somehow managed to make it through with a rough video before getting stopped by the guards. They messed up t...
Precarious Office: a climate refugee from the future
Precarious Office was a promenade performance that took place earlier this year in Macau. I designed a walking route through the city which started on the southern shoreline, passed through the city centre and arrived at the gallery, Ox Warehouse, who ...
Expanded Tourism – The Gods are Thirsty
I finally put together some clips of the performance that took place during the Expanded Tourism workshop in Tenerife a few years back. We ascended the formidable volcano El Teide, starting in the night, walking through the dawn and arriving at the sum...
The Mud Man: Walking Art in Macao
On a random Wednesday morning in April I climbed over a tall barrier that blocked off the beach. I was covered in mud head to toe and carry office furniture.To be precise, I was pushing, pulling, carrying and dragging an office chair, a folding desk, a...
The Tour of All Tours: Shanghai Xintiandi video
Every now and then I find bits of video on old phones or wherever and that's precisely what this is. Some footage of The Tour of All Tours in Shanghai. Seeing as there is rather little video of this show online, I thought it would be good to share it.T...
From a muddy mangrove to an ex-slaughterhouse: a promenade through Macau
I'm in Macau preparing a performance that I'll film tomorrow. It's a tour in the sense that it is a promenade style of show that travels through the city. The original inspiration was land reclamation, of which Macau has a great deal. The video below s...
Engeki Quest Macau: a gamebook to explore the city
1. I’m sitting in a busy tea restaurant in Macau, figuring out the menu and talking with theatre producer Erik Kuong. It’s the first time we’ve met since Covid so there’s a lot of catching up to do. Some old men sitting opposite us flick through newspa...
The Golden Tour – an odd sort of alchemy
TThe clothes have arrived so I'm playing around with costume and sound. This is usually more of an afterthought but with this tour I want to embrace style above content so this comes first. It's clearly a dumb look. This offers me some cover and is ent...
Back into Making Tours: The Golden Tour
After a long break, I am making another tour and it will get its first outing next month in Shenzhen. I will try to make it as bad a tour as possible from the content point of view while, at the same time, turning it into a spectacle. The Tours of...
The Historiographic Tour: one for the future
I was back in Beijing to perform a show and in the evening was going out to have a drink. I decided to ride a bike to Gulou as that is more fun than taking a taxi or subway. Somehow the riding took over and I never made it to the bar. That is liable to...
The Flying Tigers Tour of Changting
This tour started off as something quite different to what it became: a domesticated cat that turned into a tiger. The group I was visiting the town with were to be shown the historical town centre of Changting but as it was raining and the organizers ...
Quick-Fix Tour of Shapowei: A New Tour
After a bit of a pause, I am back into making tours. Tomorrow I will give a tour of the Shapowei neighborhood looking at the phenomenon of quick-fixes or improvised repairs. The tour will not only investigate them and look at the stories they can tell,...
The Confessions of a Celebrity Stalker Tour
Some tours are pure industry products: profitable, predictable and more or less pointless. They only become interesting when they start to go wrong and off script. Other tours, however, are a world away from the tourist industry and their existenc...
Tour Workshop in Hong Kong
Following last year's workshop and festival in Hong Kong, I'll be returning with another extended workshop on making cultural tours. I'll be teaching between August 5-12 and then Indy Lee and Uncle Hung will continue the next weekend. We'll be wor...
Related
Ambling Africans @Snape Maltings
Ambling African Women walking group was created in 2023 and are delighted to offer their very first guided walk for the Suffolk Walking Festival. Join the group on a very gentle amble and discover the very special landscapes around Snape Maltings of expansive reedbeds, the gently flowing River Alde, amazing birdlife, and some beautiful woodlands.
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