In Outdoor School: Contemporary Environmental Art, edited by Amish Morrell and Diane Borsato, Aislinn Thomas reflects on the origins and evolution of her participatory walking projects:

“Slow Walkers of Whycocomagh and Fast Walkers of Whycocomagh came about to address what seems like an age-old problem: how to spend time walking with other people who have an ideal pace different from your own. Negotiating precisely what “slow” and “fast” looked like on any given day was an interesting part of the experience, as was noticing the different relationships to each other and the landscape facilitated by the different speeds.

This piece was originally part of a larger project, the Whycocomagh Skillshare, which was conceived of in response to living in a rural context, in an intentional community that centres people labelled with intellectual disabilities. The skillshare took form as an ongoing series of free workshops, presentations and activities and was an attempt to actively seek out connection, engagement and exchange while challenging normative ideas of expertise and value. Since then, the slow walking groups have taken place in a mall in Mississauga, along rivers and downtown streets in Cambridge and on a mountain trail in Banff.”

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Information sourced from the Ellen Mueller website.