Charlie Lee Potter has had a lifelong passion for working with sound especially in creatively weaving soundscapes to evoke places. As a former BBC radio journalist and foreign correspondent, she knows how the sound of a place helps to tell complicated stories and has applied this to a fascinating series of podcasts recorded on walks called “Inside a Mountain”. However there is a lot more to Charlie than just working with sound, as Andrew Stuck discovers on the walk they take across Christchurch Meadows in Oxford. 25’50” 12.1MB
Inside a Mountain podcast art
Ridge & Furrow artwork
Ridge & Furrow artwork
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Photographer Quintin Lake set himself a daunting challenge, to walk and photograph the coastline of Great Britain. It is turning into an 8-year project, as he is now editing hundreds of photographs he has taken on the coastal walks, around what he has aptly called ‘The Perimeter’. Andrew Stuck catches up with him on a bright and breezy day along the Cotswold Way, a favourite local walk of Quintin’s. Although Quintin has spent five years solitarily walking, which he describes as ‘oneliness’, he is great company, and he tells Andrew about why walking and photography are so integral to his life, and how there is a kind of creative magic in walking more and photographing less. 26’02” 12.2MB
Approaching Skegness, March 2020Happy camper, Port an t-Salainn, Point of Knap, Argyll & Bute, Scotland.Quintin Lake Image: Tom Martin
Feature and portrait image: Tom Martin, all others: Quintin Lake
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Andrew Stuck is in Bognor, in West Sussex on a very hot day, walking around the University of Chichester campus with Andrea Vassallo. Andrea is completing a PhD with an installation in which gallery visitors will be able to experience walking beside him on a long walk. For Andrew, long walks tend to be 12 to 15 kilometres; for Andrea, he chose to walk from his home in Lancing (UK) to his childhood home on the outskirts of Venice (Italy) during the summer of 2021.
If you happen to be anywhere near Bognor in the first two weeks of September 2022, visit the installation and experience, falling in step with Andrea as he walks to Italy.
The conversation is about the walk Andrea undertook and why long distance walking is so important to him and (spoiler alert) we also cover details of the exhibition – the conversation opens with Andrea explaining how far he walked and how it took him. 28’47” 13.5MB
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Five years ago when looking for places to get close to nature with her toddler, Hana Sutch found it proved to be absurdly difficult.Although through recommendations, she found One Tree Hill and Sydenham Hill Woods, Hana became convinced that what was needed was a simple app to help solve this problem facing many parents.She applied her digital design skills and came up with Go Jauntly.With an infectious laugh and an intriguing story to tell, Andrew Stuck and Hana quickly fell into a candid conversation, about how Go Jauntly came into being. This is a must listen for anyone, who like Andrew, has thought of creating an app, as Hana reveals just how tough it can be. 26’20” 12.3MB
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Fiona Hesse, is the guest curator of WALK!, the current exhibition at the Schirn Kunsthalle Gallery in Frankfurt that includes work from more than 40 international artists. Recorded over a Zoom call, it was Andrew Stuck’s pleasure to learn more about Fiona’s own journey to becoming a curator, her enthusiasm for contemporary art, and in how she undertook a PhD on walking artist, Hamish Fulton. Hamish was one of the first Talking Walking interviewees back in 2008. Although the opening of the WALK! exhibition was delayed by COVID, some of the artists featured were able to include work they had created under pandemic restrictions. Fiona reveals some of the criteria used to select works, offers a useful working definition of walking art, as well as suggesting a couple of walking art practices for listeners to try. 24’51” 11.6MB
Andrew Stuck is in Cannon Hill Park in Birmingham, in the heart of Britain’s West Midlands, walking beside the River Rea with psycho-geographer and documentary film-maker, Andy Howlett, who recently completed “Paradise Lost” an essay-film about Birmingham’s Central Library and the death of modernism. Just before the first pandemic lockdown, Andy joined forces with Pete Ashton and Fiona Cullinan to create a walking art collective called Walkspace. Despite the lockdown, WalkSpace has grown exponentially, attracting artists, walkers and writers from across the region and support from the British Council. Andy talks about his own enthusiasms as a documentary film maker, as well as adventures by the Walkspace collective, that have included, a mapping project involving ‘extreme noticing’, a search for the geometric centre of Birmingham and a moonlit night walk in which magic spells were cast, as part of a series called ‘Walkspace erratics’ as well as a forthcoming international exhibition on ‘parallel walking’. 28′.10″ 13.2MB
Anna Dighero is a contemporary dancer, whose passion for walking is inspired by family walking holidays in the Italian Alps. Not to be frustrated by the restrictions of the pandemic, she sought means by which she could keep in touch with physically-distanced friends, creating audio stories that they could walk in their local neighbourhoods. Weaving her dance experience, passion for walking and newly found interest in geo-locating sound recordings. Andrew Stuck meets Anna in Battersea Park on a warm sunny evening, as lockdown eases in London, and the interview opens with Anna telling us about her dance training. 19’15″ 9.0MB
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Hugh Lupton is a storyteller, living in East Anglia, who has been walking the lanes and ways of Norfolk learning stories through walking, and sharing them across the globe. We meet on a cold and windy day in April on one of his favourite walks, beside the River Bure, and talk about how people can value place in a different way if they have a sense of the narratives that are associated with it.
View of the River Bure in Norfolk
It is not the first time that Andrew Stuck and Hugh have met. Both of them took part in the Sideways nomadic art festival, that included a walk across Belgian Flanders in 2012. 20’27″ 9.6MB
In 2010 Jonathon Stalls walked from Delaware to California, crossing the United States on foot in 242 days. Quite an endeavour but it pales besides what he has achieved in the last ten years. He is the founder and creator of Walk2Connect walking beside thousands of people. It began in his home state of Colorado, and has expanded to several states, and even to the UK. It encourages people to walk (or roll) together, at an unhurried pace, to connect more closely with one another and their surroundings, in turn, building their appreciation of the environment and opening their eyes to the obstacles faced by pedestrians. In this extended interview – our first undertaken on Zoom, a month before the COVID pandemic struck, we explore Intrinsic Paths and Pedestrian Dignity, Jonathon’s new creative endeavours, and look into the future at what he anticipates he will be working on in the next 20 years. 32’28″ 15.2MB
As a walking artist, Jonathon sustains much of his creative work by way of patrons. You can learn more about becoming an Intrinsic Paths patron here.
STOP PRESS – buy Jonathon’s new book WALK: SLOW DOWN, WAKE UP, AND CONNECT AT 1-3 MILES PER HOUR – more details here
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“Peddars Way, A Walk with Chalk” is an illustrated book by landscape artist and long time Norfolk resident, Tor Falcon. Tor became intrigued by the Peddars Way described by some as Britain’s loneliest national walking trail. It follows a Roman Road for almost 50 miles from Thetford in the Breckland to Holme-next-the Sea. So taken with walking and drawing, Tor has gone on to follow and draw every river in Norfolk, and describes how during lockdown she’s also been chasing the moon. Between pandemic lockdowns Andrew Stuck caught up with Tor.19’11” 9.0MB
Children’s book illustrator and comic book artist, Lizzy Stewart, when drawing herself, draws herself walking – striding confidently across the urban scene. Her latest book, called “Walking Distance” is a personal account of the way she sees her life out and about on foot – she argues that walking is the ‘clearest way to participate in life’. Her work touches on themes of how women are observed in the city, both in reality and on film, as well as revealing insights into her creative process and her own ways of working. Recorded in and around the gardens surrounding the Horniman Museum in south east London on a February day in 2020. 22’08” 10.4MB
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Jack Cornish is a programme manager for the “Don’t Lose Your Way” campaign at Ramblers, the UK charity promoting walking and defending rights of way. That’s the ‘day job’, but there is much more walking in Jack than just from 9 to 5. He has walked the entire length of the British Isles and is walking every street in London. The interview opens with Andrew Stuck asking Jack what “Don’t Lose Your Way” is all about and what his role entails. 22’06″ 10.4MBY
Since the recording was made, Jack has taken on a new role at Ramblers as Head of Paths.
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