Walking Publics/Walking Arts: Walking, Wellbeing and Community was a research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (2021-2022) exploring the potential of the arts to sustain, encourage and more equitably support walking during and recovering from a pandemic.
Publics and Creative Walking1
Walking and arts play a role in sustaining and improving physical health and mental wellbeing.2 Our research aimed to explore and understand how people experienced walking during the COVID-19 pandemic. We also wanted to know about the creative walking activities that people created or encountered, ranging from stone trails and window decorations, to chalked pavements and I-Spy, and the impact of these on the experience of walking.
Walking Artists
Our research also wanted to understand how artists from across the UK used walking as part of their artistic practice, whether adapting existing work or using walking as a resource for the first time during COVID-19. We sought to learn from artists and share their expertise to support more people, and more diverse people, to enjoy walking.
Collaborating with artists, we have developed a free online resource, The Walkbook: recipes for walking and wellbeing, responding to the challenges people have experienced in participating in walking.
Bridging Walking and Art
Organisations drawn from across walking and culture partnered us in this research endeavour. We hope that our research helps our collective understanding of how creative walking activities were and could be used to mitigate isolation and anxiety, maintain health and wellbeing, enhance social connectivity, and facilitate cultural participation and empowerment. Creative walking may be a very valuable resource for both walking and cultural organisations, helping them support and engage more people.
Resources created
The research which emerged from this project is shared through our #WalkCreate Report, our #WalkCreate Artists’ Report , our #WalkCreate Gallery, a digital showcase of work made using walking during COVID-19, The Walkbook, a free digital publication, our Walking Art Commissions, a range of essays and articles, and a forthcoming book, Walking Creating Caring Making (Routledge, 2027).
1 Our definition of walking is inclusive of all kinds of bodies and includes wheelchairs, mobility scooters, walking aids or other technologies to help Disabled people and anyone with mobility issues to move around.
2 See Walking for Health (2013); What is the evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and well-being? (2019)