Short and longer creative performative walks along the River Avon between Bath and Bristol sensing legacies of slave-ownership.
Wayfaring in obscured histories, reflecting on flow, cycle and memory; alert for sounds, voices, tears, sweat and blood suspended in the water. 
Opportunities to gather sound, and images, sketch, share talk and think.
Its not a history walk, we will make it what we make it.
Its about us

Sweet Waters: the walks, June 2017
with
Bath Festival Fringe
Fringe Arts Bath
and
Festival of Nature

Workhouse Walks:  Wednesdays

On 23 July 1856, the boys from the Bath Workhouse, with their schoolmaster William Winkworth, completed a circular walk of 16 miles from the Workhouse around the northern fringes of Bath. These walks are an attempt to explore on foot and with our bodies that  journey and to examine the themes which may emerge as we reflect on those times from these times The first walk begins at the workhouse, the last returns us. In July we aim to walk as close as possible to the route they took in 1856. This project is developed in collaboration with Dr John Payne whose exhibition ‘Workhouse to Hospital’ at the Museum of Bath at Work opens on 18 May.
Registration is essential, numbers are limited!
Wednesday 26 July
Retracing the full epic July 1856 walk from the Workhouse at Odd  Down and back: Approx 17 miles Click to register

Wednesday 16 August
Western parishes loop from Museum of Bath at Work across Lansdown.. 8 miles max. Click to register

Wednesday 6 September
Eastern parishes loop from Museum of Bath at Work. 9 miles max. Click to register

Wednesday 20 September
Museum of Bath at Work to Bath Union Workhouse. Approx 7 miles Click to register

Regular Walks continue:
often on a first Sunday....
walking out on enchantment,
to other views,
sensing embodied legacies...

Fringe Walk Sweet Waters recce:
to Beckford's Tower & Saltford Brass Mill and back..... 
Sunday  2 April


April's first Sunday Walkout will be a recce in a single loop for two walks I will be offering as part of the Bath Fringe this year. Here is the route:
http://my.viewranger.com/route/details/MTE3MjM4
Loop from 44AD via Beckford's Tower and Saltford Brass Mill and back along the river.

Approx 12 miles.

Should be a good spring walk with plenty to think about. The triangle at the end of the triangular trade. Out of the enchanted city where slave generated plantation wealth accumulated and was invested, to the top of the hill where Beckford's Tower stands. If we disenchanted the tower what might we see or hear? ... then down the hill to the Brass Mill where goods were made to be sold for humans at the beginning of the whole sordid cycle.

This loop then will form two walks taken at a slower and more thoughtful pace on June 10 and 11 details to follow.

Previous Walks:

Workhouse Walks to Hampton Rocks and beyond.....

A walk continuing the recce for the Workhouse Walks. From a holy well out towards Solsbury Hill and back over Bathampton Down.  Spring vistas, sticky buds and views on poverty and welfare and whatever else we bring to it. Blessings perhaps?

Here is the draft route:

http://my.viewranger.com/route/details/MTE1MTQ0

Approx 10 miles

The full walk on which the Bath Union Workhouse Schoolmaster led his boys in the summer of 1856 is an epic 16 or 17 miles. I am doing this with writer John Payne for an exhibition he has coming up soon at the Museum of Bath at Work. I will offer a series of short experimental performative walks 5-6 miles and one long walk of the entire route in a day.  The walks will explore resonancies around welfare and the land, walking as an act of free will and speculate as to why the boys were 'walked' so publicly. Performative walks of another kind.

We will retrace more or less the steps of the master, Mr Winkworth and his 'poor' boys...his diary is not so clear about the girls perhaps looks like they walked a different route. But they all  rested up at Hampton Rocks.

Nature Walk

(no) sign of spring?
A walk in the park alerting our senses and tickling the memory  of school days. Did you ever do a nature walk? No walking in crocodile pairs but taking the time to stop and look, listening, smelling .... tasting (perhaps). Walking in the enchanted city before spring has sprung to the place where the city constructed nature. What will we find, what will we learn?

Workhouse walk 2 parishes.
Beckford revisited

A walk from Bath city centre to Beckfords Tower over the downs into the valley for Woolley and Langridge and back up to Lansdowne.  Wayfaring on routes through two parishes in the Workhouse Walks...and see what happens, what surfaces about schools and poverty and charity. Discovering an alternative route to Beckford's Tower from the centre closer to his infamous ride...and again see what happens. Sweet riches and grim poverty over the hills and and far away. No golf.

Sunday 20 November
Find another Bath: a Walk

in association with the exhibition......
wayfaring through obscured, hidden and forgotten spaces and sites
 A walk sense-ing/visiting/passing through some of the locations artists responded to for the book and the exhibition.

Walkers are encouraged to visit the exhibition and join the walk with memories and response for a reflective wayfaring.
Some of the artists may take part,
Find another Bath....maybe several.

Sunday 6 November: Brass Mills

A walk out of the city along the river beginning to scope the Sweet Waters experience in detail. We will sight three brass mills from this journey down the meandering river. At Saltford the river still turns the last remaining wheel, it may be working as we pass. Listen again for the voice in the waters, echoes of the thundering hammers, sensing distant cries in the dark.. More sweetly we pass and will try to sense remember  the chocolate factory sold off by an international cheese conglomerate. Sold in turn for luxury housing.

Sunday 2 October: a listening walk

 A walk along the river Avon from Bath. Listening...maybe some talk. Memories surfacing. But mainly listening. Ghosts of other places. Voices from the river. In part retracing the steps of Haile Selassie. Starting to think about what sense-ing actually means. We'll pass the ruins of the slums briefly exposed and about to be cleared again. Under bridges, along old wharves.  Is there an enchantment in the sounds? A year of walking done, a second one begins now.  Sweet Waters project  is taking shape.

A chance to draw and take pics, a slow walk. Record and share sounds from the river.
Sunday 4 September. To the Burial Grounds...
As part of FindanotherBath a further photo and drawing walk,
A walk out of the city up the downs to the old Jewish Burial Ground and the unmarked graves of Baths poor.

Join another wayfaring walk through memorials, presences and absences, gathering and sharing thoughts sounds and images.

The route includes some time at Smallcombe Cemetery, where we will listen for the ghostly strains of 'Danny Boy' then passing chapel and church for fearsome warnings in Combe Down village before a stop at the old Bath Jewish Burial Ground and concluding with a short walk along the Wansdyke to the Bath Union Workhouse burial field.
Sunday 7 August. The Plaqued and the Unplaqued
As part of Find another Bath, a photo walk.
A walk in Bath exploring plaques, memorials and absences, thinking about the Atlantic slave trade and legacies of slaveownership.
A walk wayfaring through the enchanted city, gathering views, images and sharing thoughts.

Meet at : 44ADGallery,
4 Abbey St, Bath BA1 1NN

Leave 10.00
return to 44AD approx 16.00
Sorry no dogs
Please bring cameras, sketchpads, note books, mobile phones and devices. We will record the walk and share it live via social media. Join us on foot  and online
 #walknow @walknowlive  fb now we are walking

Three Free Walks. Bath Festival Fringe. Fringe Arts Bath.
On foot and on line.
...sensing the legacies of slavery and slave ownership in Bath and along the River Avon. An all day walk.

44AD…the Time Machine 4 Abbey St, Bath BA1 1NN

The Time Machine was curated by alldaybreakfast
 27 May - 12 June 2016 part of Fringe Arts Bath
Selected artists, performers, writers, musicians and scientists will have a day to play in the Time Machine. Their responses will be filmed to create a concomitant, evolving and cohesive multilayered durational installation. 

Walking not Drowning
Wednesday June 1   Bath



Oceans and rivers flow through and carry the stories of slaveownership and the Atlantic trade. What was made on the river Avon, what went down the rivers, what was lost at sea and what came back up this river? How is our watery present entwined in the watery presences of the trade in human lives.

Utopia/Dystopia:in conversation
Saturday May 28                    Bath

Two short walks opening and closing a day of conversation on themes that correspond with the best of our aspirations and the worst of our nightmares.

Walk1:
11.00 Open the conversation, stretch minds and legs on a networked walk to The Finest View in Europe 
(but it may cost you to get in!)
Out of the enchanted city, over the fields, up the hill and back again down the road.
Meet at reception, Bath School of Art and Design
Approx 3 mile walk. Return approx 13.00.


Walkers are invited to consider, share thoughts and generate resonances on some of the dystopian aspects of Bath and the people who made it - not least its ambivalent relationship with slavery.


1330 for 1400 - 1700   Lecture Theatre
Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe
Guest speakers include:
Kate Rigby, the newly appointed Professor of Environmental Humanities at Bath Spa University and author of Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe;  
Linda Williams, a specialist on human-animal relations, climate change and mass species extinction; and
Rachel Withers, writer and critic, focussing on art and ideas.


Walk2: Wayfaring in the Enchanted City
17.00 The conversation continues in the café, online and on foot walking through the heart of utopian Bath, approx 19.00 arriving at “Bath’s Artisan Quarter” for exhibitions and the utopian/dystopian pub, The Bell, in Walcot Street.

Walk and share on social media.  Follow and contribute @walknowlive and  #walknow

Meet at:  Bath School of Art and Design

Bath School of Art and Design

Bath School of Art and Design
Sion Hill, Lansdown   BA1 5SF


utopia:dystopia

A series of exhibitions and events inspired by the 500th anniversary of the publication of Utopia, Thomas More's reflections on the concept of an ideal society

Gallery

 Walknow

Walking projects for the digitally connected. Exploring time, place and memory. Making, testing, networking.
Take part on foot or online

Join the Walknow list, notifications of future walks and project news.