To set the scene –

Our last meeting was just before Christmas, when there was still some optimism in the air, but it was waining – the pandemic at this stage is becoming an endurance, I don’t think anyone expected that we would be living under such strict conditions for so long – and even the brightest spirits are beginning to fade. Walking is becoming one of the only activities that is safe and accessible, but even this is more difficult with the onset of winter. There’s also a collective tiredness, a definite screen fatigue – and it is within this that we manage to find a ray of light – a way to come together and find hope.

For this meeting, I invited fellow artist Tina Dempsey to join us, Tina has also been investigating walking whilst in lockdown and I thought it would be interesting for the group to hear about her ways of working. Tina talked through some of the questions she had been asking herself “What is art doing in this moment?” and “What do we actually need?”.

Which led on to a discussion about the local – how we come to belong to a place, how the identity of a place is formed, what happens when we pay more attention to our immediate environment? And where might we focus more of our attention whilst we walk? After spending more time in her local nature spaces, Tina shared that she has a renewed pride of where she’s from and feels more grounded.

We also considered the act of walking as a way to generate creative ideas – for example, how we might be visually stimulated, or affected by a snippet of overheard conversation. We talked about how we have been bringing art activities into our walking, setting tasks to help us stop and notice again. This is something we have been doing as a group, sharing ways of looking in order to break the mundane, now that we have been walking in the same spaces for almost a year.

At the end of the meeting some of the members shared their joy, including the feeling of having got “four wheels back on my wagon!” – a wonderful testament to the project. Sometimes we just need to hear the enthusiasm of others to spark our own.