Walking and Re-Creation

During the early modern period, as now, to go for a walk was a recreational activity. However the benefits of walking went beyond leisure. Heating the body up and opening the pores facilitated the evacuation of superfluous humours, with profound physiological effects on the individual according to early modern thought. To walk was no less than to renew the self: an act of recreation and re-creation simultaneously.

This historical insight lies behind the project ‘Walking and Re-Creation', an interdisciplinary conversation which brings together the worlds of performance and public health, history and the contemporary moment, practice and theory. It takes a long historical view of walking as a form of exercise, transport, healthy activity, and leisure to merge past and present, with the aim of discovering what walking then can tell us about walking and wellbeing now, in the age of coronavirus. It aims to 1) consider walking as a form of exercise and cultural performance that is socially conditioned, 2) unite health and creative perspectives on walking, and 3) think through how the regenerative benefits of walking can be accessible to all Bristolians.

An 'Ideas Exchange' between public health experts, a theatre historian and a comedian, this project takes a long historical and interdisciplinary view of the cultural and physical benefits of walking, considering it as a form of recreation, as well as the re-creation of oneself.