Walking across disciplines: from ethnography to arts practice

Abstract

While walking has long been implicated in ethnography and arts practice, in recent years it has become increasingly central as a means of both creating new embodied ways of knowing and producing scholarly narrative. This introduction explores this cross-disciplinary coalescence of interest in peripatetic practice. It raises a series of questions inspired by the walking/arts event, which was the starting point for this collection, as well as by the articles and works published in this special issue.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The creation of this special issue would not have been possible without the funding and practical support of Loughborough University. The ROAM arts event was led by Nick Slater, the university's Arts Director, as part of the RADAR programme of events that create connections between the town and the university. We would like to thank Nick and the staff at RADAR for their enthusiasm for the walking, art and ethnography theme and for their help and support for the seminar. The walking, art and ethnography seminar was generously funded by the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at Loughborough University. We are grateful to the university for supporting this event, to our four speakers, and also to the forty or so participants (some of whom travelled from abroad to attend) for enriching our discussions.

Notes

[1] For details of RADAR, see http://arts.lboro.ac.uk/radar/about_radar/.

[2] A recent example is the ‘All great thoughts are conceived by walking’ (the title is a quote from Nietzsche) workshop held at the Tate Modern in 2007, which maintains a blog at http://walkart.wordpress.com/.

[3] The project is inspired by and replicates Myers’ walks around Plymouth.