The Walking Institute

A peripatetic school for the human pace

The Walking Institute explores, researches and celebrates the human pace by bringing walking and other journeying activities together with arts and other cultural disciplines and people from all walks of life.

Forthcoming Events
Slow Marathon: 24-26 April 2015 along the old railway line Portsoy to Huntly
Mountain Talks: monthly talks about walking across the world

Research & Mapping: to research and map the concepts, philosophies and notions surrounding walking and linking them to the walking & art discourse.

Activities & Path-Making: to identify and develop walking activities and new paths & trails which connect to the broadening networks and dialogues across the globe.

We address those key aims through questions in relation to health & social cohesion, environment & ecology and tourism & economic regeneration in Huntly and further afield through art and related disciplines, such as geography, anthropology, cooking, architecture or history.

History

Since 2006 Deveron Arts has developed projects that bring walking, art, artists and other people together. In 2010 we commissioned 21 Days in the Cairngorms a project with Hamish Fulton, which formed a starting point of discussion about the many different forms and interests in the act of walking. Since then Deveron Arts has a keen interest in the concept and activity of walking and the human pace and commissioned a series of walking related projects. An overview of past walking projects can be found here.

Thanks to funding from Leader EU and the Creative Place award we won in 2013, we kick started the programme with a path-making project From Source to Sea, following the River Deveron and the second Slow Marathon in April 2013 with walking action and discussion around John Muir day. To follow, in summer 2013, we were collaborating with Stuart McAdam on his project Lines Lost, discovering the former railway links from Portsoy on the Moray Coast to the Aberdeenshire heartland.

Currently we are working with a number of artists, including Alec Finlay, Gill Russell, Paul Anderson and Simone Kenyon on the Hielan' Ways project, rediscovering the trading routes connecting the Aberdeenshire heartland with the Cairngorm Highlands.

Whilst core development will happen in Huntly, the programme is to spiral out geographically from this centre of both action and research to include satellite events and collaborations elsewhere. This will emerge through the development of relationships with artists and other partners working with both, rural and urban as well as local and global contexts, engaging critically with the walking & art discourse within an international perspective.

We want to know about all walking activity. This information will be added to our Walkingand page, where we are collecting the many facets of walking - Art, Politics, Parades, Love, Literature

Email: [email protected] with your information

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