British Summer Time, Series 2 and 3 – Blake Morris

An Instagram post of a sunrise over a street with a row of Victorian houses on the right. On the left side of the image is a pavement running alongside the Racecourse Park. A large screen reads UK Government Message National Restrictions Are Now In Place You Must Stay At Home Follow Published Guidance Gov.uk/Coronavirus. On the other side of the post it reads: Blakewalks British Summer Time Season 2, Walk 3. A chilly morning in Northampton for my (now sanctioned) daily walk. Sharing the sunrise with @clarequalmann, @zoebladon, @chriswellington and @thetravelingtype_. From England to Germany on the same frozen terrain. I chatted (at a safe distance) with a woman who was concerned about being able to continue walking her dog. I think a cheeky second daily walk is in her future.
Blakewalks Instagram post, March 2020 - Photo Credit: Blake Morris
An Instagram post of a sunrise over a street with a row of Victorian houses on the right. On the left side of the image is a pavement running alongside the Racecourse Park. A large screen reads UK Government Message National Restrictions Are Now In Place You Must Stay At Home Follow Published Guidance Gov.uk/Coronavirus. On the other side of the post it reads: Blakewalks British Summer Time Season 2, Walk 3. A chilly morning in Northampton for my (now sanctioned) daily walk. Sharing the sunrise with @clarequalmann, @zoebladon, @chriswellington and @thetravelingtype_. From England to Germany on the same frozen terrain. I chatted (at a safe distance) with a woman who was concerned about being able to continue walking her dog. I think a cheeky second daily walk is in her future.
Blakewalks Instagram post, March 2020 – Photo Credit: Blake Morris

British Summer Time is an ongoing series of short sunrise walks in the week leading up to the time change (forward in the spring, and backwards in the autumn). I invite people to join me to walk from 15 minutes before sunrise until 15 minutes after and take three pictures (start, middle, end). The walks are sychronised by the sun, but not always simultaneous.  

The second and third seasons took place in 2020, under lockdown restrictions. This precluded the few in-person sunrise walks I had done for the inaugural season. I also dropped the daily blog format I used to document the first season of walks. Lockdown shifted focus to correspondence, rather than collation. Through e-mail and social-media I shared sunrises with people in Bournville, and Greifswald, St. Ives, Cork and Cardiff. This became an essential mode of connection during the beginning of lockdown and as it extended into the fall.

https://thisisnotaslog.com/British-Summer-Time-Sunrise-Walks

Blake Morris is a walking artist and scholar based in New York City. His works have included the Arts Council England funded series of site-specific walks, This is not a Slog, created for Ovalhouse Theatre (London) and scores published in Claire Hind and Clare Qualmann’s Ways to Wander publications (Axminster: Triarchy Press). His recent book, Walking Networks: The Development of an Artistic Medium (London: Rowman and Littlefield International, 2020) offers a definition for the artistic medium of walking and discusses its development. Blake holds a Ph.D. in Drama, Applied Theatre and Performance from the University of East London. 

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