Talking Walking

Graphic designer, illustrator. art and health practitioner, turned Walking Artist, writer and Desire Lines podcast producer, Emily Wilkinson is now studying for a PhD researching therapeutic landscapes. Based in north east Wales, it is not practical for Andrew Stuck to meet her in person and go for a walk, and instead they record an interview over a Zoom call. Perhaps it is a little indulgent on Andrew’s part to be interviewing a fellow podcaster, but in doing so Emily reveals a lot about the value she places on writing (as a portable art form), and on listening and recording conversations. She believes Walking Art can contribute to building confidence in the young and generating creative opportunities for marginal groups as well as for others.  30’15” 14.6MB Download notes of items mentioned in the interview with Emily Wilkinson Emily Wilkinson_podcast_notes_APPDownload

Pau Cata presented at the Walking Arts and Relational Geographies conference, held in Girona, Catalonia, in July 2024. After his talk, they set off together on a slow walk through the city’s historic streets — partly in search of somewhere to pause, where Pau could enjoy a beer and Andrew a coffee. Pau is a walking historian, researcher, and curator whose practice bridges art, geography, and cultural mobility. He has coordinated several significant initiatives, including the Center for Research and Creativity Casamaleas (CeRCCa), North Africa Cultural Mobility Map (NACMM), and the HARAKAT Platform. Over the past decade, he has developed an extensive body of research in Morocco and across parts of North and Saharan Africa, focusing on mapping and documenting artist residencies and creative networks that have often been overlooked or underrepresented in Western art discourses. His work seeks to understand alternative, non-Western approaches to creativity and exchange — exploring how movement, migration, and collaboration shape artistic practice. Through a mixture of happenstance and deep engagement with place, Pau has also participated in collaborative research along trans-Saharan trade routes — journeys that, fittingly, have frequently unfolded on foot. Since 2020, his ongoing inquiries have been framed withinthe Art Residency Research Collective (ARRc) , where he continues to investigate residencies as spaces of encounter, knowledge exchange, and relational geography. 26’08” 12.3MB Pau_Cata_podcast_notesDownload

After 20 years of corporate life, international travel, and living overseas, Emma Cunis had been diagnosed with ME Chronic Fatigue.  She returned to Dartmoor where she had grown up as a child and slowly but surely walked herself back to better health.  She subsequently set up  a guiding business that she calls “Dartmoor’s Daughter”, helping others on their personal transformative journeys through getting closer to nature. Living in London without a car, as Andrew Stuck does, getting to Dartmoor in the far south west of England, to undertake an interview, was challenging, so Emma and he agreed to record the interview on a Zoom call. He is intrigued by her choice of “Dartmoor’s Daughter” as a business name, and how she makes a living as a walking professional, but he is also interested in what aspects of corporate life she has been able to apply as well as what aspects of walking she feels would benefit those in the corporate world. 28’39” 13.4MB Download notes from this interview: Emma_Cunis_podcast_notesDownload Stone circle in ancient Dartmoor Foraging and dowsing in ancient Dartmoor

Although they’ve known each other for over a decade, it has not been easy for Andrew Stuck to find an opportunity to record a conversation with Richard White. An opportune moment arises as Richard comes to London for his granddaughter’s birthday and he joins Andrew Stuck on a walk together in Nonsuch Park on the outskirts of south west London.  Richard was an early pioneer in producing located media, uncovering overlooked or intentionally erased histories.  Walking is integral to every stage in Richard’s creative practice: he organises and hosts group walks as part of his research, and in recovering, processing and embedding memory. This embodied engagement with place and landscape is also key to the development and placement of media; sound is essential to the live experience and through which his audiences experience any final GPS located composition. Although still using locative media apps, Richard’s practice has evolved using handheld blue tooth speakers and silent disco kit as part of a live performative walking experience. Richard recently co-edited and contributed to “Breaking the Dead Silence” a collection of essays published by Liverpool University Press on memoryscapes and obscured histories in the aftermath of the toppling of the Colston statue in Bristol. He recently undertook a research fellowship in south Australia walking the thread of empire and botany.  Richard’s current project  ‘Finding Country’  attends to the landscape and built environment of North Somerset (UK), terraformed by enslavers and colonial extraction. The project is a ‘walking-with’ the legacies of wealth extracted from colonised lands and peoples manifested in the English countryside and country house. In the project Richard draws on and seeks to articulate his walking research in Adelaide, South Australia, walking and asking questions, re-telling stories back into the landscape 41’57” 19.7MB Download notes from this interview: Richard_White_podcast_notes_FINALDownload

Andrew Stuck is in Sweden at Björkö-Konstnod (BKN) in the northern Stockholm archipelago to join the Walking as Practice artist residency of which he is going to be part. Among the artists there was Janice Jensen from Germany, whose work Andrew has come across since Janice was shortlisted for the 2023 Marŝarto Award for Walking Art. Janice has just demonstrated a “Drawing by Walking” mechanism that she has created as the first step in an elaborate process to draw the walks she makes.  Their conversation takes place on a walk along an unsealed road early on, on a July evening.     20’24” 9.6MB Download notes from this interview: Janice_Jensen_podcast_notesDownload

The people Andrew Stuck interviews tend to be talented, resourceful and resilient or a combination of each, one might describe them as ‘can do’ people. Saira Niazi is not only a ‘can do’ but is a ‘has done’ and ‘will do’.  She has worked in many roles, between jobs, a dozen or so years ago she set up Living London, leading walking tours that she called ‘Wanderings’, seeking out ‘hidden gems’ in part to satisfy her own curiosity and finding others to share her discoveries. Saira is a recent recipient of a Winston Churchill Fellowship and travelled to New York and San Francisco seeking out what she calls ‘Renegade Guides’ those have a similar passion for exploration and sharing knowledge.  She has returned home to Tooting in south west London and written and published the ‘Renegade Guide Handbook’.     22’51” 10.7MB Download notes from this interview Saira_Niazi_podcast_notesDownload

For many the Covid pandemic has been a difficult time to live through, not least for the residents of Melbourne in Australia, who may well have had to endure the longest lockdown of any city. For Dan Koop, a curator and producer, the lockdown appears to have actually given him an opportunity to explore new ways of working, reconnecting with his immediate neighbourhood environment, as well as tackling common societal issues from a local perspective. Andrew Stuck catches up with him midway through an extended European trip of Dan’s on a sunny afternoon in July 2024. They are walking together along an unmade road on the outskirts of Girona in Spain. 20’12” 9.5 MB Flowing Loops documentation Dan leading Flowing Loops Field recording for Flowing Loops Dan_Koop_podcast_notes_

Andrew Stuck is walking through the streets and around the battlements of the fortified city of Girona in Catalonia, Spain. He is in the company of Molly Wagner an American who has lived in Australia for many years.  Neither of them are certain of finding their way. Molly is the author of “No Trespassing”, a sumptuous photographic journal of a number of long walks that she made through urban, suburban and rural New South Wales. They are both attending the Walking Art and Relational Geographies conference organised by Clara Gari of Nau Côclea, at which Molly will be talking about the formation and growth of Australian Walking Artists, for which she is a convenor. 27’25” 12.9 MB Download items mentioned in this interview: Molly-Wagner_podcast_notesDownload

Andrew Stuck is on Sutton Heath in Suffolk with Henry Fletcher, author, way finder and wilderness guide turned walking artist. He is fairly confident that he is not going to get lost as Henry has more than a decade’s experience in guiding people in Iceland in much harsher conditions than they are encountering on a Spring day in May. With the help of Jay Simpson a fellow trail maker and workshop facilitator they authored the Banff Mountain Literature Award-winning “Wayfinding in the Westfjords” along with a companion trails map and two other guides to the local ecology and walking conditions. The books include reflections and responses from scores of participants who have taken part in artistic residences and trail restoration workshops that Henry and Jay devised and led . By raising money for the publication through a kickstarter crowd funding campaign they were able to hire a book designer, a botanical illustrator, as well as translating the books.  It turns out that although they have created far more than a walking guide with a book filled with beautiful photographs and artwork, Henry as a self-proclaimed way finder is not someone inclined to use a guidebook or to follow a well marked trail, so Andrew is intrigued how in creating this suite of books and map may have modified Henry’s own practice. Similarly Henry is an enthusiastic supporter for the world trails network, for which he created a film festival and a series of artist talks. 32’31” 15.2MB Download notes of times mentioned in this episode: Henry_Fletcher_podcast_notesDownload Image credits: Julie Wegner, Jay Simpson, Henry Fletcher

The Portuguese partners in the Walking Arts and Local communities project are from the University of Minho in Guimaraes directly working with two educators in particular, Natacha Antão Moutinho and Miguel Jorge Alves Miranda Bandeira Duarte.  Since 2018 they’ve been working with Geert Vermeire from Belgium on a week long residency called The Walking Body in which international walking artists join graduate students. Andrew Stuck has been lucky enough to have met Natacha and Miguel at different events over the last few years. It is hard to separate them, and many have made a similar mistake to that of Andrew, in thinking that they are man and wife or artistic collaborators. However, they each have partners and families of their own, and it’s only as educators that they work together. Each is an enthusiastic and passionate walking artist in their own right. Somehow, Andrew managed to find a window in their busy schedule during The Walking Body 5 to walk out with them in the vicinity of the university’s newly opened campus. It stands beside now redundant leather and textile washing tanks, with channels and tunnels with rushing water still flowing through a once busy industrial site. 22’57” 10.8MB Download items mentioned in the interview: Natacha-Miguel_podcast_notesDownload

Author and long-distance walker Stephen Ford and Andrew Stuck are walking through woodland beside open fields with traffic on the A3 rushing past half a mile away. It’s not the first time that Stephen and Andrew have met to record an interview. Six weeks ago they had walked across Esher Common together and much to Andrew’s embarrassment he discovered that his voice recorders’s hard drive was full to capacity, so much of the interview wasn’t actually recorded. Stephen forgave him this ‘schoolboy error’ and this time proposed that they walk on common closer to Claygate.  As you will discover from their conversation, there’s a necklace of publicly accessible common in this part of Surrey, that is much frequented by dog walkers and joggers. The interview opens with Stephen talking about where it is they are walking. 21’59” 10.3MB Download notes from this interview: Stephen_Ford_podcast_notesDownload

It is the first time that the 4 year Walking Art and Local Communities project partners have met in person and the excitement is palpable. Developing the partnership and writing a successful proposal to the EU for funding to support Walking arts has taken quite a few years. Andrew Stuck is with Fred Adam one […]

Andrew Stuck and Sinwah Lai have been in Psarades in north-western Greece attending the Walking Arts Encounter where the temperature hasn’t dropped much below 40°C. What it means is that Andrew interviews walking artists, either in the shade or as late into the evening as possible. Fortunately, the days are long, but the heat is […]

Andrew Stuck planned meeting up with Australian Kim Goldsmith sometime in advance, knowing that she would be returning from a residency on Skye with her partner and would only have a short time in London. They were staying in a hotel just south of Kings Cross, so Andrew met them there, with the intention of […]

Andrew Stuck has travelled to Wolverhampton to meet Daniella Turbin, whose walking art practice includes drawing and photography, to talk about her year long project “A Place to Return To”. We take a walk for an hour beside a canal that runs from Wolverhampton to Stoke-on-Trent. For Daniella, this is just a short walk, as starting […]

‘Women walking, The City, at Night’ is an initiative begun in the last three years by Eléonore Ozanne. She and Andrew Stuck are walking briskly on a grit-covered path that runs beside a lake in the resort town of Banyoles, 20 km north of Girona in Spain. They have only recently met as they are […]

Andrew Stuck has agreed to meet adventurer Alastair Humphreys at Swanscombe station and walk with him towards the Thames estuary to talk about his new book “Local”. To be honest, Andrew has never been to Swanscombe station, and as he found out later, neither had Alastair. It is an area of the estuary that is […]

Andrew Stuck is with Greek dramaturg, Anasthasia Polychronidou, at the Walking Art Encounter in Prespes, in western Macedonia and they are trying to keep out of the sun.  There is not a lot of shade, but they’ve discovered that if they walk in a circuit around the local chapel, at least two of the sides […]

Only since Covid has Tamsin Grainger discovered Walking art, but in that short time she’s made two Soundwalks, which have been shortlisted for the Sound Walk September Award and she has made many other works. A Shiatsu practitioner, she bartered  treatments for home stays, on long-distance walks across Europe and became known on the Camino […]

Andrew Stuck is with Mick Douglas, a self-confessed, long-distance solo hiker. He has worked as an artist researcher into creative practice at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, for three decades. Much of his work was around the interaction of people within modes of transport, comparing practices in cities in Australia to cities in India. We […]