Talking Walking

Andrew Stuck is being led by Lora Aziz on a not particularly well-marked trail through the floodplain of the river Chelmer in Essex. It is a windy Spring day and they have to contend with the noise of the A12 which runs on a series of bridges crossing the floodplain, so there is quite a lot of background noise. This doesn’t dampen Lora’s enthusiasm to tell him about the scoping project she has just completed which will bring cultural elements and water infrastructure to the forefront along this little known route that runs from Saffron Walden to Southend on Sea, and is called The Saffron Trail. The wind drops but they are also caught in a shower of rain during the interview. We learn a lot about how Lora’s mixed race heritage and passion for the natural environment in which she lives, has driven her to share her knowledge to Essex residents and visitors alike. 43’04” 20.4MB Download notes of items mentioned in this interview: Lora_Aziz_podcast_notesDownload

What is a sound that is memorable to you? That’s a question that Simon James French opens his Kyoto in Sound podcast. It is a question he poses to fellow residents in Kyoto, Japan where he is now living. Concurrent with recording sounds from this intriguing city, he also leads sound walks in which he encourages participants to record the sounds which are memorable to them and with which he then creates a souvenir audio postcard for them. It is with a little bit of trepidation that Andrew Stuck is interviewing Simon on a Zoom call as he is a sound artist and professional at manipulating audio. As it happens the pair of them have some problems before they even start recording. But don’t worry as it won’t detract from your enjoyment. 35’00” 16.8MB Credit: Ash Ryan Arnwine Credit: Chie Kamiya Download notes from this interview: Simon James French_podcast_notesDownload

Ainslie Murray has been teaching architectural design at the University of New South Wales in Sydney for several years and concurrently researching Walking art. She’s a keen solo hiker following trails not only in the Australian bush but also around the world and she’s particularly interested in researching the temporary structures that hikers create with their tents and belongings as they walk the trails.

The co-founders of The Safest Way app provide insight into the data they use, and why they feel their app provides reassurance to pedestrians.

It’s been 18 years since Andrew Stuck met Canadian Barbara Lounder at the Banff Centre in The Rockies at a walking and art residency where Talking Walking podcasts began. She is here in London for a few days with her partner and artistic collaborator Robert Bean and they have asked him to meet them in Fitzroy Square. The reason for this specific rendezvous becomes loud and clear very early on in their conversation, in which they talk about some of the works they have made together and individually in the intervening period. 28’39” 13.4MB “In Place: photographs, objects, stories” is on now, until July 25, at the Artspace Gallery in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia. It’s a two-person show with Barbara Lounder and photographer Katherine Knight. Download notes of items mentioned in this interview: Barbara Lounder and Robert Bean_podcast_notesDownload Walking the Debris Field of the Halifax Explosion Walking the Debris Field of the Halifax Explosion Walking the Debris Field of the Halifax Explosion Being-in-the-Breathable: annotated walk Being-in-the-Breathable: annotated walk Image description and credits 3 Images from the Narratives in Space + Time (NiS+TS) Walking the Debris Field of the Halifax Explosion project, Centenary Procession event, December 3, 2017. Bean and Lounder are founding members of NiS+TS. Photos by Katherine Nakaska for NiS+TS.  NiS+TS collaborators, actors from the Halifax-based improv group “Tea Time Creations”, create dramatic tableaus based on historical records from the Halifax Explosion of December 6, 1917. The tableaus were enacted at locations along the procession route. The Centenary Procession of approximately 200 people made its way through the residential neighbourhoods that were at Ground Zero of the 1917 Halifax Explosion. The procession was led by musicians playing snare drums and saxophones and included specially designed banners. The Centenary Procession route included the historic site of Fort Needham Memorial Park, overlooking the harbour and Ground Zero. The distinctive bell tower in the park is a landmark that can be seen from many vantage points in the city. 2 images from Bean and Lounder’s Being-in-the-Breathable: annotated walk held in Sokołowsko, Poland, 2017, as part of the Festival of Ephemeral Art. Photos courtesy the festival organizers. Participants stretch their arms out and circle around, establishing their individual “quarantine” spaces. This project took place on the grounds of the former tuberculosis sanatorium in Sokołowsko, Poland, and predated the COVID19 pandemic and its “social distancing” protocols. Participants walk on a woodland trail through the grounds of the former sanatorium. Feature image description and credit Tintype portrait of Barbara Lounder and Robert Bean, with unnamed more-than-human companion, by Alanah Correia. Reproduced in Becoming Corona Walker chapbook published by Barbara Lounder, 2026.

Andrew Stuck is peppering Shane O’Mara with a number of questions as we pace around Queens Square in Bloomsbury London As a professor of experimental brain research with a couple of best selling books on Walking and on talking this Dublin resident must be one of the most eligible guests on a Talking Walking episode. Shane is also very familiar with Bloomsbury and this square in particular, as it is home both to the Institute of Neurology and to the Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience where he has many colleagues and friends to discuss his research findings with. As a listener to this podcast, you are probably only too aware that walking is good for coming up with creative thoughts and resolving problems, but like me, you may be unaware of how that happens and thankfully Shane has got the answers. 34’58” 16.4 MB Download notes of items mentioned in this interview: Shane_O’Mara podcast_notesDownload

For  a performer trained to draw attention to themselves Ami Skånberg has found a way to make herself invisible in public space. Andrew Stuck has come to Gothenburg on Sweden’s western coast to interview her and learn about her passion for a Japanese performing arts step called Suriashi (also practised in tea ceremony and martial arts). Not only does she practice Suriashi daily but she uses it in her teaching and through that encourages others to use it in meditation and peaceful protest.  So, join them on this walk through a busy modern city occasionally adopting an ancient Suriashi step and turning themselves invisible.   28’10” 13.2MB Download notes from this interview: Ami Skanberg_podcast_notesDownload In this photo Ami practices with Nishikawa Senrei, Kyoto 2011 Improvising to two giant organs (dance) Domesticated pilgrimage in Carina Ari’s apartment in Paris (Suriashi) Image credits: Feature – Pethrin; Kyoto, 2011- Folke Johansson; Improvising – Karin Brygger 

Coming to the final day of the Walking Art and Relational Geographies conference (2024) that has included a walk from the city of Girona to where we are now in Banyoles, Andrew Stuck is with visual artist and writer, Laroche a.k.a. Luce Choules. They have just given the keynote this morning, a performance lecture, as they call it, described in the conference programme as ‘Material Fields: surveys, mappings and counter-cartographies’ – a live performance using a format of projected imagery and narrated script to invite an audience on a poetic journey across the natural, managed and urban territories of Europe and beyond.  In our conversation we discuss Laroche’s interest in fieldwork and how they have established a network of fellow thinkers to explore ‘fieldwork as research and art form’, as well as how they compose their performance lectures.  24’23” 11.4MB Download notes of items mentioned in this episode: Laroche_aka_Luce_Choules podcast_notesDownload

In May 2025, multi-award-winning Canadian photographer and environmental artist Marlene Creates is in Brighton, England, and Andrew Stuck takes the opportunity to meet her there. They are walking in woodland not far from Preston Park train station and Andrew invites her to compare their surroundings to where she lives on the island of Newfoundland off the east coast of mainland Canada. Marlene uses the 6-acre patch of old-growth boreal forest where she lives as an outdoor studio and now spends much of her time there observing how it changes with the seasons, photographing what she sees, and writing poetry to describe the unseen. She’s been sharing this forest with primary school children, inviting them to go on multidisciplinary guided walks to learn about the nature of their local ecosystem, as well as concurrently bringing back to light terms in the Newfoundland dialect through video-poems. Andrew and Marlene chat about her unusual field research back in the 1980s, when she came to Britain and rode thousands of miles on a 1968 Vespa motor scooter, and they discuss her walking art practice. The podcast ends with her reading a list poem composed of over 100 verbs that describe ways of walking. We retreated indoors to make the recording of Marlene reciting the poem. She also shared other words and phrases related to walking that she found in the Dictionary of Newfoundland English that she would like to be brought back into common parlance. 39’43” 21MB Marlene Creates_podcast notesDownload Feature Image credit:  Bernard Fougères

Andrew Stuck has come to Sweden to an area 3 hours drive north of Stockholm, at the northern tip of the Stockholm Archipelago on the Baltic coast to interview Anna Viola Hallberg a video maker turned Walking Artist, the curator of the WAP coalition of walking artists – a residency based at Björkö Konstnod / BKN . His trip is part of The Walking Arts in Local Communities (WALC) 4 year project that is part funded by the EU Creative Europe programme, as the WAP coalition of walking artists has been nominated as a node. These nodes are to extend the network beyond the original seven partners in five European countries who are promoting walking art within their local communities. The WAP coalition of walking artists is relatively new but has already gained significant recognition through the efforts of Anna Viola and a cohort of almost 200 artists. Andrew has had the opportunity of staying with Anna Viola and taking part within their residency for a week before he interviews her. It’s a Sunday morning at the start of the Swedish summer holidays at the beginning of July. 34’42” 16.3MB Download notes from this interview: Anna_Viola_HallbergDownload