The Art of Walking: Walking as Art workshop took place over two sessions. Carolina Franzen, my collaborator, and I, Helena Wadsley, planned two routes and several creative processes in advance. For the workshop, we began by walking through the forest in silence, taking in the details–the textures of the trees and bushes, the birdsong, the way our feet moved over the path. We stopped to do some sketching, starting with blind contour drawings (drawing without looking at your paper) to remove any self-consciousness any participants had about drawing. We focused on small details rather than the big picture. While the group were drawing, we laid out a long roll of paper and an improvised ink pad big enough to accommodate a foot and participants made a collaborative drawing by stamping their feet in the handmade ink and walking across the paper. Participants wrote letters to the land on handmade paper which we left under a rock to be collected prior to the second workshop. On the second day, while we walked, participants were invited to gently touch their surroundings as a way of greeting and showing gratitude. We stopped to make monoprints of leaves and flowers, a process of single use printing using homemade cornstarch clay and ink pads. This was a way of taking home a part of the forest that is parallel to the practice of pressing flowers; no plants were harmed for this exercise. We returned the letters to the group, and they put them into a bucket of water; since then we have made paper pulp and cast a section of the landscape into a collaborative sculpture. Our final exercises took place at a large fallen tree whose root system. formed a wall. We sat and listened to the birdsong and drew how it moved us. With long ribbons made from a bedsheet, participants extended the roots of the tree by looping the ribbon through and holding it up so each person was attached to the root momentarily.
About 25 people participated, with four coming to both sessions. Most, if not all, of the participants were not artists so the activities were new to them and gave them fresh ways of connecting with nature.
