The Walking with Children program was conceived as an encounter within an encounter of this year’s Walking Arts Encounters Conference in Prespa, curated by Clare Qualmann, Clementine Butler-Gallie, and Athanasia Tziona. As a curatorial walk project, it created space for work about, for, or with walking and children, bringing together visiting artists, their families, and the local community in playful, reflective, and intergenerational ways.

Highlights included ‘Following Human and Bear Traces ‘with Athanasia Tziona and Konstantinos Zervas, a walk developing empathy for wildlife from the hillside discovery of a bear skeleton to its reconstruction in the old school, ending with children’s painted reflections. In ‘A Playfield Made by Walking,’ Peter Schreuder transformed Psarades’ disused basketball court into a new game-space shaped by footsteps and found materials. Clementine Butler-Gallie’s ‘Streetside Games from Around the World’ reclaimed the streets through childhood games, while Clare Qualmann’s ‘Intergenerational Walk Recipes’ invited people of all ages to co-create new instructions for walking together. Art 25 collective staged a giant puppet procession embodying the spirit of the lake, and ‘Across the Borders’ was a walk that led children with and without disabilities along a mountain trail to the Greek-Albanian border.

On one of the final days, a child asked: “Why is it walking with children, not walking with adults?” They proposed a spontaneous workshop where children led the way. In Psarades square, five children guided the adults, who followed their instructions and paths, for once.

Walking with Children was more than a set of activities: it offered a framework for inclusion, enabling parents to take part in the conference with their families, connecting local and visiting children, and affirming children as equal participants in walking art. It reminded us that children’s ways of walking, playing, and imagining continue to teach adults how to move together.