Walking Art
Walking has been at the forefront of my mind and my practice for two decades. We tend to associate the evolution of the human brain with the success of our species, but this is in fact not true - it is the evolution of the human legs, able to travel huge distances over multiple terrains that gave us the edge. The brain came later.
Walking in my practice, performance & writing
One of the proudest things for me is to be part of an international collective of Walking Artists formed by a collaborative research project in the Fine Arts School of the University of Western Macedonia in Greece - please follow the 'Walking Encounters' button above to see this, or just scroll down..
Wales was perhaps the most formative landscape for me - as a working class child from Birmingham, we would take our holidays there and my family loved walks. With the Scout group (all that I had in my village), we would freeze in tents and walk ranges such as the Brecon Beacons; I remember being tied to one and other in thick mist up along the the top of the Beacons - I felt like a true adventurer!
Walking for me entered my artistic practice in the early 2000s when I realised that my grandfather, Jozef Piasecki, had walked across Europe, escaping the invasion of Poland, to Beirut before finding his way to Britain. Many people, often women and children, flee from war on foot, over mountains and at night. In Dharamsala I spoke to 12 year old Tibetan children that had traversed the Himalayas to find freedom in exile. Walking is in many ways therefore at the heart of my PhD, which concerns how journeys, particularly fleeing from war, affect human identity and belonging.
As an adult I feel that I have collected walks and even took myself to the high Himalayas in northern India to explore ancient monasteries. Through the Scouting Movement and the DofE Award I have been fortunate to train in micro-navigation, gaining my Lowland Leader (Mountain Leadership) and Terrain 2 qualifications.
Walking Encounters 25 at WALC, Prespa
Becoming part of the WALC international collective of walking artists has been a much greater adventure than I could have imagined - I began by delivering an audio walk and joining interviews and discussions online, toward the end of the Covid pandemic. In 2025 I joined the artists and researchers in the most incredible landscape of Prespa in northern Greece, right at the borders with Macedonia and Albania, a landscape of bears and pelicans, lakes, mountains and the traces of the civil war. The most astonishing thing for me was to meet so many like-minded artists - the fact that people, from right across the globe, knew how to walk together, often in harmonious silence, was just wondrous to me - it gives me hope. Every day was full of creative walks, talks, collaborations, papers and joy.
'Walking Arts & Local Communities (WALC) is an artistic cooperation project, co-funded by the European Union, Creative Europe, starting in January 2024 for four years. With seven partners from five countries, WALC establishes an International Centre for Artistic Research and Practice of Walking Arts, in Prespa, Greece, at the border with Albania and North Macedonia, backed up by an online counterpart in the format of a digital platform for walking arts. WALC builds on the previous work of hundreds of artists and researchers already practicing Walking Arts as a collaborative medium, and having met at the significant previous walking arts events and encounters in Greece, Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium.
The partners of WALC are Visual March to Prespes, University of Western Macedonia (Leader, Πανεπιστήμιο Δυτικής Μακεδονίας, UOWM, Greece), walk · listen · create (WLC, Belgium), WalkLab2.PT at the University of Minho (UMINHO, Universidade do Minho, Portugal), Contemporary Art Center Nau Côclea (Centre de Creació Contemporània Nau Côclea, Catalonia, Spain), Association Temps Réel (Gigacircus, France), Action Synergy SA (AS, Greece), School of Gaasbeek (De School van Gaasbeek, SvG, Belgium). The artistic co-ordinators of the WALC project are Geert Vermeire (WLC) and Yannis Ziogas (UOWM).'
Cheshire Hike
The Cheshire Hike has been running for over 60 years and sees young people, between 11 to 18 years old, self-navigate across the footpaths, trails and hills of the County. Each year the route changes and is kept a secret until just prior to the hike, so young teams have to prepare their navigation very close to doing it. Over the two days there are several routes, dependent on age-groups) and the Scouts walk up to 60 kilometres. It's a celebratory event too - they dress up in hats and even costumes for the event, whilst carrying kit for walking, camping, food and first aid. We run training over a few months and I enjoy teaching children about map reading, micro-navigation and pacing a great deal. When the event comes, I used to help run the basecamp but in recent years, shifted to one of our mobile support minibuses - they walk a long way with only their own company, but actually the volunteers are posted everywhere at checkpoints and major crossings, as well as sweeping behind the routes. In recent years I have published about the Cheshire Hike, comparing it to pilgrimage inasmuch as it's a liminoid moment that changes these children's perception of their own abilities (and does the same for the parents). When they finally arrive, muddied, sore, tired and happy, it's a huge moment of celebration. It is competitive and each district has its trophies, but I always preferred to think of every Scout that completes it as having won. In that spirit I used to put their names on trophy bananas for the finish line!
Two Saints Way
The Two Saints Way is an ancient pilgrimage route that I walked together with my friend, the Reverend Robert ......... For some years Rob was giving my children a bit of maths support (they are genetically cursed to be artists!) and one week, after this, I asked him about an interest in pilgrimage, since I wanted to walk a route. He told me about the Saxon route between Chester and Lichfield called The Two Saints Way - in one direction this is the walk from Lichfield Cathedral to Chester as a dedication to Saint Wurberg, daughter of the last pagan King Wulfhere, whilst in the other direction, Chester to Lichfield, it is the dedicated pilgrimage of St Chad, who baptised Wurburgh and whose well is in Lichfield. The walk is around 100 miles in length and we agreed to undertake it together. At this point I was becoming involved with the international Walk-Listen-Create and Walking Encounters project and decided to create a performative Audio-Walk of this experience, discussing with Rob the tensions and harmonies of a secular or religious pilgrimage, wherein the former emphasis the journey and the latter, the destination. I had also become interested in the relationship of pain and suffering in the body to the wellbeing of the mind and spirit.
Articles & Chapters
Projects
Beloved Routes!
Skye
Skye has to be one of the most magical places that I have walked across because of its shear range of strange and beautiful landscapes - it is an extraordinary island, with extraordinary walks, from the volcanic teeth of the Cuillin ridge to the ethereal Old Man of Storr, from the magical Fairy rings to incredible sunsets on north-western shores looking out to the other Hebridean isles.
Eryri National Park, Wales
