Walking Scores
Various locations
The walking scores series grew out of my Future Wales Fellowship research into relationship with nature.
I am interested in how we move through wild spaces and how we invite them to speak with us. In looking for a more sensorial mode of communication in my own explorations, I began to document approaches that had worked for me, as invitations to others. The first of these was a score for walking with the coracle, a set of instructions (for myself) that emerged from experiences I had walking with the coracle in Eryri during the Fellowship and the lessons I was taught by the elements and the landscape.
I have been experimenting with creating scores that can be taken to any location, including one for walking in the night time, and with the development of scores for specific landscapes. Alongside this I am leading guided group Walks to the Edges – with a winter series of full moon walks to the sea in Folkestone Warren, and experiments with silent walking and embodied arrival at Stackpole in Pembrokeshire.
Most recently I created a draft score for Ynys Enlli, following a week in residence on the island – the score relates to natural features of the island and offers two routes to “edge” spaces – the top of the mountain and the cavern at the very furthest southerly point. It is intended as an invitation to day visitors to go deeper with their experience and to take a single long and slow journey in which the land, water and wind lead the way.
I am also exploring a new practice of mapping spaces with the body through balance and trust, moving with rocky edge spaces to find the limits and possibilities of the body and the rock in a reciprocal exchange. With the working title “Dancing with Rocks” this may evolve into a new work that offers a more place-led approach to mapping, where the sensory encounter defines the documentation of the journey.
I am continuing my research through ecosomatic practices and developing ways in which the scores might be read, whether within the landscape itself, or as a separate more ephemeral layer. In July I will be testing how the scores might evolve in a participatory context, with an open workshop in association with the Royal College of Art in Folkestone Warren.
