——– invitation to contribute to the walking through project
when lockdown started i was already experiencing the feeling that the world was slowing down. i can remember an evening where i stood and listened to sheep munching on the long grass…
walking became a way of gaining some perspective on the situation as covid-19 spread across the world. either with the family or just the dog, it was our break from being in the one place all day – the walking experience had become heightened…
as we start to ease out of lockdown i would like to invite you to join me in creating an interactive documentary about our experiences of walking through the pandemic. to do this i’m looking for contributions of videos from your walks made during the pandemic. they can be of walks already made or from one yet to be made. together we’ll tell a storey of what it was like to walk through the pandemic.
i’m particularly interested in your reflections about your experiences of walking through the pandemic.
if you’d like to be part of the community of contributors please message me for guidelines and how to send the files to me.
invitation —–
as i write this there is a sense of lockdown starting to come to an end. with this in mind i have done my best to work quickly to get the invitation out for contributions to the project.
initially i focussed on a formal approach with a community i’m already a member of. to supplement this i took to social media.
within the stories of cats and activities were shared clips of things seen on walks. in chatting with the authors a less formal invitation approach emerged – in fact the interactions on social media informed how the invitation now reads.
the covid-19 emergency fund from the arts council is enabling me to plan for the future as i react to the responses to the invitation and conversations i’m having.
reflecting upon the last 10 days i have experienced a lot about how to engage people into an emerging community. that’s another way of saying the arrival at what the invitation read like was actually very taxing. i was aware of what i wrote having a direct bearing on what responses the project received.
the other point to note is the invitations on social media have gone out very much quicker than via the formal network. for the record i have shared the invitation with members of other groups i’m part of.
while researching the invitation i have continued to shoot video myself on family walks. it’s been quite freeing using my smartphone to do so.
something i’m learning to accept is that for all the invitations and interest shown i have no control over what contributions are made. ie how much material will be available to work with. a consideration of scale.
on my social media channels i didn’t anticipate the reflective writings about walking – of course this is encouraged in the invitation.
that leads me to reflect about the process to arrive at the invitation. for several days i had an unachievable scale in mind. what i mean by this is i was obsessing on a huge number of contributions to the project. this visioning created anxiety as it put me under unnecessary pressure to connect with enough people to achieve this.
once i accepted that what we’re making is small, with a degree of intimacy to it, the conversations on social media became hugely important.
after those anxious days of preparing the invitation, the project feels like it’s currently where it needs to be. :)
i’m going into the next phase feeling confident.
