Lise Pape talking walking

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Path Feel

Imagine inventing and developing a product that will improve the lives of thousands of people.  That would be an exciting and satisfying prospect. Imagine you develop two at the same time…..  Andrew Stuck was lucky enough to meet and record this interview with just a such a person.  Danish-born innovation design engineer and now med-tech entrepreneur, Lise Pape, with her Path-Finder and Path-Feel shoe accessories, is developing products that will help Parkinson’s sufferers,

Path Finder user test

those with diabetes, and other sensory neuropathy conditions, to improve their mobility and quite probably extend their lives.  We talk as we walk across Clapham Common, early one sunny morning, with the background sounds of commuting traffic and groups trying to get fit. 22’19” 10.5MB

Download notes of items mentioned in the interview with Lise_Pape

Kristie Daniel talking walking

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Kristie Daniel

Kristie Daniel

Kristie Daniel is Programme Director for the Liveable Cities Programme delivered by Healthbridge a Canadian NGO. healthbridge-logo Healthbridge were multi-award winners in the 2015 Walk21 Visionary Awards, for projects in developing countries in Asia and Africa, where they are working with local groups to create public spaces and improve non-motorised access to them.

Andrew Stuck, producer of Talking Walking, caught up with Kristie as she stopped over in London, on a journey from Toronto to Bangkok. The interview was recorded in March 2016 on a walk through Margravine Cemetery, a popular public space in Hammersmith, beneath the flight path to and from Heathrow. 26’22” 12.4MB

Download notes from the podcast interview with Kristie_Daniel

What has happened since the interview

“Since the interview was recorded, we have continued to work on all the great projects that I spoke about in the interview.  The HoiAn Master Plan is currently being implemented.  The city has planned for 79 new parks that are within walking distance of residents.  The city has thus far achieved 40% of that targeted number of parks.  In Kathmandu, the success of Ktm Walks has lead to the creation of a one kilometre permanent pedestrian space in Thamel.  This was a huge success for the local project.

In addition, we have been able to greatly expand our projects in Africa thanks to a grant from UN-Habitat.  In Africa—like in many other places in the world—public spaces are used for public life, commerce and interaction. However, lack of funds, planning, and maintenance, as well as priority for motorized vehicles, has turned many public spaces into unsafe, unforgiving and unconnected places. Many public spaces are difficult to access, especially for those living in vulnerable situations.

This is especially the case in Kampala, Uganda, Niamey, Niger and Accra, Ghana. There is a significant lack of formal public spaces in each of these cities, particularly in the outlying areas where the slum settlements are located. Of those spaces that do exist, they are degraded, of poor quality, and under constant threat of being developed into other purposes.

To address this issue, HealthBridge is working with local partners to  implement pilot public space projects in Kampala, Niamey, and Accra.  These spaces will improve local policies, plans and designs for safe, inclusive and accessible public spaces.  The final results of this project should be available in May.”

Listen to Kristie Daniel’s 20×20 Vision of walking in 2040

Tim Ingram-Smith talking walking

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Tim (far right) with fellow Spiral walkers

Tim (far right) with fellow Spiral walkers

Andrew Stuck first met Tim Ingram-Smith back in 2015 when he came on a walkshop to reveal the lost neighbourhood of London’s Kings Cross, on which Andrew had collaborated with fellow Talking Walking interviewee, Tom Bolton.  Tim mentioned that he was about to embark on a 3 year expedition to discover parts of London he had never visited.  He talked about how he was going to navigate his way across the metropolis, by following a set of spiral routes, beginning from Kings Cross. Andrew’s curiosity was piqued and he knew at that at some point, he would need to join Tim with his sound recorder to hand.

Recorded in November 2016 on part of a leg of the London Spiral, from West Ham Park to Forest Gate station. Published in November 2016. 19′ 18″ 18.2MB

full-spiral-route

Full Spiral route – November 2016

If reading before the end of 2018, why not join Tim Ingram-Smith on a leg of the London Spiral – further details here:  https://londonspiral.wordpress.com

Download notes from the podcast interview with Tim Ingram-Smith

Martin Foessleitner talking walking

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Martin Foessleitner is an Information Designer living in Vienna. As he undertakes all his dailyVienna_way_marker1 errands on foot, he knows his neighbourhood intimately. However, Vienna isn’t just for residents, it attracts day trippers and is an international tourist destination. Andrew Stuck walked with Martin through the centre of the city on a sunny October day as he explained to me how he came to design the city’s way marking system and how when providing information to those on foot, less is more.Vienna_way_marker2

Recorded in October 2015 on a walk through Vienna in Austria. Published in June 2016 26’45” 12.5MB

Download notes of items mentioned in the interview with Martin_Foessleitner

What Martin has been doing since our interview

“Universal design in a new attitude: understood as a right on privacy, access to public spaces and participation in social life for everyone in any situation, a basic design principle assisted by invisible serving technology, we are fascinated by combining analog maps with augmented reality functions.”

Ben Waddington talking walking

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

e-1

Getting under the skin of a city like Birmingham isn’t something you can do overnight, although that was how Ben Waddington and a group friends began their quest some ten years ago. It was almost by accident that Ben became a guide to the hidden, overlooked or secret parts of the city.  He was trying to help people out in finding out about forgotten characters in Birmingham’s cultural and industrial past.

 

e-4 e-3 e-2

 

 

 

Images from previous Still Walking events

Ben quickly recognised that he couldn’t be an expert in all things Birmingham and has since set out to help others reveal what is under the city’s skin, by setting up the Still Walking Festival, and supporting local people to tell their stories.

Interview by Andrew Stuck: Recorded in July 2015 on a walk in Old St Pancras Churchyard in London. Published in April 2016 25’07” 11.8MB

Download notes of items mentioned in the interview with Ben Waddington

STOP PRESS – SEPTEMBER 2017

Ben Waddington has drawn together an intriguing mix of walks and talks for the Still Walking Festival – it is a fantastic programme that includes the British Army and tightrope walkers. Read more here..

 

 

Diana Wesser talking walking

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

DWARThe Leipzig City Quarter Expeditions is an intriguing walking art project which debunks prejudices about urban neighbourhoods – we all have heard of a notorious neighbourhood in one or other city, and Leipzig’s Eisenbahnstrasse had notched up infamy as “The worst street in Germany.” Diana Wesser and collaborator Antje Rademacker, both living in Leipzig devised a project in which residents of such neighbourhoods had a chance to tell their stories about living in these places, revealing just how different actuality is from perception.

Photo credit: D Wesser

Photo credit: D Wesser

expedition_Maps

Photo credit: D Wesser

Photo credit: D Wesser

Baking and exchanging cakes are key to residents collecting and sharing stories about where they live – so entranced were some that they openly invited visitors into their homes, workplaces and lives.

The interview is recorded at the Vienna Walk 21 Conference in October 2015, at which Diana collected a Visionary Award.  21’10” 9.9MB

Download notes from the podcast interview with Diana_Wesser

Blake Morris talking walking

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

e-ATT_1450652233884_received_10156241458400456_2It is difficult to resist the infectiousness of Blake Morris’s enthusiasm for walking and walking art.  Originally from California, via Seattle, New York and now based in London, Blake is co-founder of Walk Exchange, an intriguing ‘think tank’ on foot in New York City.  An advocate for reading about walking as much as walking about reading, he has devised the Walk Study Training Course withWTSC
 New York based artist Dillon De Give.   Take the course and you get the chance to walk, read and study walking art with others and to create your own.  When Andrew Stuck came across Blake 2 or 3 years ago, he was so intrigued with the Walk Exchange and what it had already achieved that he wanted to emulate it here in the UK.  Blake has trounced that idea by coming to London and running it here himself. 22’57” 10.8MB.

Notes from the podcast interview with: Blake_Morris

Photo credit: Christopher Wellington

What has Blake Morris been doing since our interview?

“Since my interview with Talking Walking I have completed my doctorate at the University of East London. My thesis, Walking Networks: The Development of an Artistic Medium defined walking as a specific artistic medium and offers new methodologies for critical and creative walking practices. It will be available through the British Library in 2018.

I have also started collaborating with the Living Maps Network ( http://www.livingmaps.org.uk ) and, along with Clare Qualmann, I edit ‘Lines of Desire’ for the critical cartography journal Living Maps Review ( https://livingmaps.review ). Over the summer all the members of the Walk Exchange were able to meet in New York City for the first time in a few years, and discussions are underway for WSTC 7 in Seattle, London and NYC. I am currently working on A Wander is not a Slog (2018)          ( https://awanderisnotaslog.wordpress.com ) a project in which I will undertake all 54 walks from Ways to Wander a compendium of walking instructions from members of the Walking Artists Network.”

STOP PRESS

Blake has just co-edited the latest issue of Streetnotes (June 2021) on “Walking in the Digital City“.

Claudia Zieske talking walking

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Getting artists out and about in rural north east Scotland has been the aim of Claudia Zeiske,  founding director of The Walking Institute and of community arts organisation Deveron Arts.

A keen walker herself, she uses walking not only as a creative practice but also as therapy.  Having been invited to compete in a marathon as a runner, she found the experience far from inspiring, and set about creating a ‘Slow Marathon’ in the rural countryside that surrounds Huntly in Aberdeenshire.  Each year a different artist is invited to devise a new marathon route where people are invited to walk as slow as they like.

Andrew Stuck caught up with Claudia between her busy schedule of meetings in London.  We walked a circular route around the Whitechapel Gallery, trying to find quiet streets in which to record our conversation – a staggeringly difficult challenge in an area beset with development including a new Crossrail station, as far from the tranquillity of north east Scotland as one can be. 17’30” 8.2MB

Download notes from this interview with: Claudia_Zeiske

Photo credit: Christine Sell

Dieter Schwab talking walking

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Austria is the first country in Europe, if not in the world, to have a National masterplan strategy toMasterplan-grab promote walking.  This has come about in a remarkably short time.  It is a little over 8 years since Vienna resident Dieter Schwab formed the Austrian Pedestrian Organisation, to rally supporters in every echelon of government, to plan how they could put the pedestrian first in their strategic plans and policies.

Speaking to Andrew Stuck during the 2015 Walk21 conference, from the Rathuas in Vienna, Dieter begins the interview by explaining just how rewarding living in an inner city walkable neighbourhood can be.  10.1MB 21’48”

Download notes from the interview with: DieterSchwab

Listen to Dieter’s 5 year walking forecast made in December 2013.

Tim Pharoah talking walking

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

What do we mean by walkability? What makes a neighbourhood walkable and why does it matter?  These are questions put to Tim Pharoah, a transport researcher who has been championing mobility on foot for more than 40 years.  Recorded on a walk through the streets between Waterloo and London Bridge railway stations, part of London where Tim once lived.

Bankside, The Cut and Waterloo Quarter, as this part of London in 2015 is now known, is a hive of construction and a tourist attraction to boot.  Few places offer quiet with Red Cross Gardens as a welcome exception.  The recording opens with Tim telling us about his chief concern of traffic speed and how to calm it. 28’53” 13.5MB

Notes from the podcast interview with Tim_Pharoah

Idit Elia Nathan talking walking

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Idit Elia Nathan was brought up in Israel in the 1960s, her memories of playing in the streets of Jerusalem either side of the Six Day War have frequently influenced her thinking and actions, on how she, her children and all of us can and might ‘play the city’.

Idit has exhibited and presented work in galleries based on documenting her seven walks through Jerusalem along with other artworks that link play and interminable conflict. Believing that playfully limiting a walk often generates creativity and unexpected encounters, she often works with fellow artist Helen Stratford as Play the City now or Never seeking ways to disrupt people’s movements through the city to reclaim some of its spaces through play.  Concurrently, she is completing a PhD titled Art of Play in Zones of Conflict – the case of Israel Palestine.

Andrew Stuck joins her on a walk around Hampstead in London not far from where Idit’s father lived during the Second World War. The route they follow was determined a by a throw of a dice. 10.5MB 22’20”

Download notes from this interview: Idit_Nathan

What has Idit Nathan been doing since our interview?

“Since July 2015 (when podcast was recorded) Idit’s walking related book Please Watch U R You Head has been exhibited in numerous exhibitions in UK and Europe. Her Walk Anywhere Anytime play die has been the focal point of several walking presentations such as Art, Language Location (2015) in Cambridge, Collisions (2016) – a Performance research festival at Central School of Speech and Drama in London as well as for Walk Exchange (2016) London and New York. Idit’s film 7 Walks in 28 Minutes has recently (2017) been screened as part of Metageography: Space – Image – Action exhibition at Pushkin House, London.

Most of Idit’s recent walking related artworks have been with Play the City Now or Never have who have since July 2015 launched their App as planned. The pair have also worked in Cambridge, launching their App Play Cambridge Now or Never! at the Junction’s Watch Out Festival in 2017. They have also been commissioned by the National Theatre in London (2016/17) to lead several Lightbulb Walks exploring the theatre’s unique building and the spaces around it and in Summer 2017 they have walked and played Yorkshire Sculplture Park to which they will return in 2018 to launch their mobile , walking and playing artwork.”

For updates on Idit’s practice visit her website on: http://www.iditnathan.org.uk/welcome.html
And for updates in Play the City Now or Never go to: http://playthecitynowornever.com/

Listen to Idit Nathan and artist collaborator, Helen Stratford’s 20×20 Vision for walking in 2040

Standing man observes the scene

Bradley Garrett talking walking

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Bradley Garrett describes himself as a ‘professional trespasser’ who has been exploring many hidden places and spaces ‘where we are not supposed to be’: climbing The Shard while it was under construction, breaking into the Maze prison and  abandoned underground bunkers and tube stations. When he agreed to an interview, Andrew Stuck wondered whether he would be blindfolded, bundled in a car and taken to a remote destination.

Maze prison

Maze prison

It wasn’t quite like that, although they did travel by car to the outer edges of Southampton, and then walked amongst motorways to reach a country route that took them to the River Test, in full flood.

Whether you judge Brad as a hero or a villain, there’s no way of escaping his infectious enthusiasm for going into places that you might think twice about visiting. 23’14” 10.9MB

Aldwych Disused Tube Station,

Download notes from this interview: Bradley_Garrett

Like what you heard and want to read more, then check out Brad Garret’s book:

Explore Everything: http://www.versobooks.com/authors/1820-bradley-l-garrett

Or take a peep at his photo album…

What has Brad Garrett been doing since our interview?

“Since we took our walk together, I’ve had a big change in my life after winning a 3-year research fellowship at the University of Sydney.

This has meant leaving the UK after 10 years in the country, and beginning an entirely new project working with groups and individuals who are preparing for the apocalypse called ‘preppers’.

For the next 3 years, I will be following preppers as they build bunkers and stockpile supplies awaiting calamity, and thinking about the bunker as the ultimate private space. So in short, I’ll be spending more time digging than walking, just like when I was an archaeologist! My new book, Bunker: The Architecture of Dread, will be published by Penguin in the UK and Scribner in the USA in 2020. ”

Bunker is a brilliant, original and never less than deeply disturbing story from the frontlines of the way we live now: an illuminating reflection on our age of disquiet and dread that brings it into new, sharp focus.

Brad has now moved back to Europe as Cultural Geographer at University College Dublin as Associate Professor.

Listen to Bradley Garrett’s 20×20 Vision of walking in 2040