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.
Australian Ainslie Murray is a visiting scholar at the Rachel Carson Centre for Environment and Society in Munich, Germany and Andrew Stuck takes the opportunity of contacting her over Zoom before she returns home. Ainslie 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. 35’42” 17.1MB
Not everything goes according to plan. Andrew Stuck is to meet the two young co-founders of the route-finding app Safest Way. The rendezvous is at the café kiosk at the Kingston Gate of London’s Richmond Park. The weather forecast says it’s going to be rainy and windy. Hardly ideal conditions to record an interview on a walk, in a park.
As it happens, Andrew learned that Ilya Ilyankou wasn’t going to join his co-founder Alesja Gilvear until sometime after the meeting time. At the kiosk there’s a man of similar age to Andrew, also waiting. When the person who Andrew thought might be Alesja approaches, Andrew was somewhat caught out that it was the other man that she greeted and not him. However, this turned out to be Ed Parsons, a digital geographer, who happens to live locally, from whom Alesja and Ilya have been receiving advice.
So, as you’ll learn from this interview they begin as a threesome and then Ilya does eventually join them.
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.
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Walking the Debris Field of the Halifax Explosion Walking the Debris Field of the Halifax ExplosionWalking the Debris Field of the Halifax ExplosionBeing-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
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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.
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)
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.
Matt Gilbert, the author of the ‘Richly Evocative’ blog has had a collection of poetry published recently called ‘Street Sailing’.
Andrew Stuck and Matt are on a walk together through Dulwich Woods part of the Great North Wood, an area where Matt volunteered to undertake conservation work.
Frequently walking through the woods has been key to much of Matt’s creative writing process and in their conversation, Matt talks about his approach to writing prose as well as to writing poetry, and gives insight into the contemporary poets who have influenced and inspired him.
Although brought up in Bristol, Matt spent much of his life in West Norwood, what one newspaper described as “an anonymous suburb of South London” – a remark that has rattled Matt and prompted him to write the ‘Richly Evocative’ blog.
22’57” 10.8MB
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After 20 years of corporate life, international travel, and living overseas, Emma Cunis had been diagnosed with ME Chronic Fatigue. She returned to Dartmoor where she had grown up as a child and slowly but surely walked herself back to better health. She subsequently set up a guiding business that she calls “Dartmoor’s Daughter”, helping others on their personal transformative journeys through getting closer to nature.
Living in London without a car, as Andrew Stuck does, getting to Dartmoor in the far south west of England, to undertake an interview, was challenging, so Emma and he agreed to record the interview on a Zoom call.
He is intrigued by her choice of “Dartmoor’s Daughter” as a business name, and how she makes a living as a walking professional, but he is also interested in what aspects of corporate life she has been able to apply as well as what aspects of walking she feels would benefit those in the corporate world.
The people Andrew Stuck interviews tend to be talented, resourceful and resilient or a combination of each, one might describe them as ‘can do’ people. Saira Niazi is not only a ‘can do’ but is a ‘has done’ and ‘will do’. She has worked in many roles, between jobs, a dozen or so years ago she set up Living London, leading walking tours that she called ‘Wanderings’, seeking out ‘hidden gems’ in part to satisfy her own curiosity and finding others to share her discoveries.
Saira is a recent recipient of a Winston Churchill Fellowship and travelled to New York and San Francisco seeking out what she calls ‘Renegade Guides’ those have a similar passion for exploration and sharing knowledge. She has returned home to Tooting in south west London and written and published the ‘Renegade Guide Handbook’. 22’51” 10.7MB
For many the Covid pandemic has been a difficult time to live through, not least for the residents of Melbourne in Australia, who may well have had to endure the longest lockdown of any city. For Dan Koop, a curator and producer, the lockdown appears to have actually given him an opportunity to explore new ways of working, reconnecting with his immediate neighbourhood environment, as well as tackling common societal issues from a local perspective. Andrew Stuck catches up with him midway through an extended European trip of Dan’s on a sunny afternoon in July 2024. They are walking together along an unmade road on the outskirts of Girona in Spain. 20’12” 9.5 MB
Flowing Loops documentationDan leading Flowing LoopsField recording for Flowing Loops
Andrew Stuck is walking through the streets and around the battlements of the fortified city of Girona in Catalonia, Spain. He is in the company of Molly Wagner an American who has lived in Australia for many years. Neither of them are certain of finding their way. Molly is the author of “No Trespassing”, a sumptuous photographic journal of a number of long walks that she made through urban, suburban and rural New South Wales. They are both attending the Walking Art and Relational Geographies conference organised by Clara Gari of Nau Côclea, at which Molly will be talking about the formation and growth of Australian Walking Artists, for which she is a convenor. 27’25” 12.9 MB
