Description
This paper introduced and summarised the findings from the AHRC-funded Rapid Response project, ‘Walking Publics / Walking Arts: walking, wellbeing and community during COVID-19’, before focusing in on walking art that used digital technologies to connect participants across time and space. The aim of ‘Walking Publics / Walking Arts’ was to understand how creative walking activities have been and could be used to mitigate social isolation and anxiety, maintain health and welling, enhance social connectivity and facilitate cultural empowerment. The project explored: the walking experiences and creative interventions of people across the UK during COVID-19 restrictions; the ‘lockdown’ work of artists using walking activity within conditions of restriction; the potential of the arts to sustain, encourage and more equitably support walking during and recovering from a pandemic.Evident in the research is the extent to which digital and internet technologies were used by artists to connect remote walkers, such as Blake Morris’s British Summer Time walks – which invited participants to walk 15 minutes before sunrise wherever they were and share images on social media, or Sonia Overall’s #DistanceDrift project in which she has posted creative walking prompts on Twitter every Sunday since the start of lockdown, to audio walks designed for those isolating such as Laura Fisher’s Going Out, Going In. Such examples demonstrate how walking work has used technology to reimagine ideas of walking, creativity and community, embracing remote connection to mitigate against some of the anxiety and isolation caused by lockdown restrictions.
| Period | 21 May 2022 |
|---|---|
| Event type | Seminar |
| Location | Glasgow, United KingdomShow on map |