The Museum of Walking is 15 years old…

In 2007 we were lucky to be included in a walking an art residency took place in Banff in the Canadian Rockies. Our proposal was to create a museum of walking to showcase new works and to share the work of walking artists. 

The Banff experience was the first for us, not having ever embarked on a residency before, and we found ourselves rather out of our depth, with  little knowledge of how to get the best use out of facilities (for we had never been to art school),  so not to waste a time there, we began interviewing each of the other a walking artists to establish how walking was an inspiration to their work.  So began the Talking Walking podcasts.

We’re having an online reunion go “Back to Banff”  on the 17th September – 15 years to the day after the opening day  of the Banff residency. We are hosting the event with the lead tutor Ernie Kroeger and are excited that we’ve already been in contact with more than half of the 30 strong walking artists contingent and hope to recruit others to come and join us.

The Museum of Walking was a ‘writing wall’ during the six week residency, onto  which we encouraged fellow artists and visitors to our studio, to write and draw their aspirations and desires for what a Museum of Walking might offer.

Ernie Kroeger swiped the giant piece of paper for his students at Thompson Rivers University, while we set out to make it an objective of the Museum of Walking, to be as participatory as possible.

We had a fairly good run, working with painting and drawing artist Martin Fidler on the Ruskin Walks, and with  psycho geographer and historian Tom Bolton seeking out Lost Rivers and forgotten neighbourhoods of London, and more recently, we launched the Urban Tree Festival with Paul Wood having explored the urban forest with him on more than 15 occasions.  We also walked with mulberry expert,  photographer, Peter Coles, and lastly we’ve been working with Gail Astbury  discovering public art.   During the pandemic, we offered dozens of online led walks virtually, as well.

During 2022 we’ve taken a little bit of a backseat: this is intentional, not least because we’ve been working with Babak Fakhamzadeh and Geert Vermeire on establishing walk · listen · create as a platform to engage with walking artist, soundwalk composers, live art performers and writers as well as a establishing Sound Walk September Awards , Listen-up a climate sound walk award, and embracing Geert’s Walking Art Encounters.

We would like to thank all of you who have supported the Museum of Walking over the last 15 years and look forward for many more adventures together in the future……