Walking Like a Tortoise started with collective walking around the edge of Edinburgh to celebrate the Festival of Terminalia. It was followed by more walks, creative responses and art-making, much questioning, conversation & radical hospitality.
The origin of this project-title is two-fold. I was giving my former neighbour, Betty, some Shiatsu for her sore back and she gave me a charming Granton story in return. She told me that when she was a child in the 1940s, she was handed a stow-away tortoise out of an esparto grass boat which had sailed into our harbour. Later, I discovered that the Taoist meditation I have been practising for many years is known as ‘walking leisurely like a tortoise’. When we walk like that, something fascinating happens: we’re conscious of everything at the same time —the details of our surroundings as well as own feelings; we feel separate, but also an intrinsic part of the world around us.
I practised a version of this slow walking around the margin of Edinburgh in Scotland, alone and with others. It was a counterbalance to the pace of life around me, and allowed for meetings with fellow residents, noticing what was there, and having time for reflection and reassessment, something that rushing does not allow.
I discovered that: Some live inside and some outside the limits of this place. When parliamentary boundaries are altered, some members of our community suddenly belong somewhere else, they have been excluded.
I wrote in my notebook: ‘The decision-making processes which have precipitated vast changes here, where we live, were democratic. Discuss!’
This walking art project was about … Slow walking like a tortoise around Granton (a place which lies between Edinburgh city centre and the sea, the Firth of Forth). Using ancient maps from the National Library of Scotland and drawing new ones. Invitations to walk. Translating our heritage walk into Arabic and Polish so more people could join in. Collaborating with local organisations and archives. Gathering together women of colour who are so often not included. Recognising that we share this area with our ancestors, and with plants, birds, animals, insects, and ghosts. Going past the remaining historic buildings, along roads which have been recently re-named (why?) Remembering and sharing stories. Making collective memories over mugs of hot tea.
Art work made in response to the walks was shown in various venues, and the Edinburgh Central Library exhibition received a Creative Scotland/City of Edinburgh Council grant.