We made a website and published a book based on 13 local artists making collages about their experiences of walking during the first lockdown – our one hour daily exercise! As well as creating a historic record of our experiences of walking in our local places during those strange times, we were looking for positive outcomes for the future that could be taken from the situation. It was an opportunity for the thirteen of us involved to continue to develop our walking practice together. It was co-ordinated by Walking the Land inviting participation and collating artists’ work from time to time as the lockdown continued, first as a website and then, during the second lockdown, publishing the work as a book. Walking the Land hopes to use the book as a foundation for workshops in a health care setting.
https://artiswalking.wordpress.com
Walking the Land is an artist collective that has been active in Gloucestershire’s Stroud Valleys since 2002. We link landscape, community and art through projects, research, exhibitions, installations, writing and shared walks with numerous artists, other professions and the wider community. We have been walking with others on the first Friday of every month since 2004. Our projects and multi disciplinary dialogues often bridge community, private, academic and public sectors, involving people in landscape decision making or other public policy while developing us as practitioners and creating new knowledge.