The paper for the ‘Drifting Bodies – Fluent Spaces’ Conference is focused on the theme ‘Walking Stories, Looking into Walking Narratives.’

I have originated three activations around walking narratives that are outlined below:

Ways of Seeing, Walks of Life

A student exploratory visual, sensory and photojournalistic experience about the streets, structures and neighbourhoods of the multicultural city of Durban.

The ‘living experience’ aims to improve their skills and heighten their observational faculties of ‘life place’ through ‘walking in the making’ of interpretations and pictures.

Through a series of 10 themed walks spanning out across the city, a sense of social cohesion unfolds through support, friendship, protection, and camaraderie.

KulturKonneKt – Walking Tours of X-ploration

A series of walks through the inner city of Durban that connect citizens with the social heritage, cultural geography, fractured origins and growth of the city into the new democracy of the Rainbow Nation.

The walks aim to develop a sense of tolerance and acceptance of the ‘other’ from widely different cultures.

The Labyrinth – Walking Journeys for Writers, Poets and Artists

‘LifePlace’ routes from maps of Durban guide groups of literary creatives through streets, buildings and recreation centres that are textually rich in aspects of the five senses. After the walk the writers gather in memory and sensory recall sessions where they ‘finger walk’ through the route on a map whilst dramatising what they have seen and felt.

An extension project involves combining elements from the three walks into a heritage arts exploration that ends up at a community-built Labyrinth in a central city park.

The plan is to connect local with global in a synchronised experience that reaches to fellow Labyrinth walkers in other countries.

Each walker will carry a compass to fix the locational point of view of interactions with the spatial-scape.