Although they’ve known each other for over a decade, it has not been easy for Andrew Stuck to find an opportunity to record a conversation with Richard White. An opportune moment arises as Richard comes to London for his granddaughter’s birthday and he joins Andrew Stuck on a walk together in Nonsuch Park on the outskirts of south west London. 

Richard was an early pioneer in producing located media, uncovering overlooked or intentionally erased histories. 

Walking is integral to every stage in Richard’s creative practice: he organises and hosts group walks as part of his research, and in recovering, processing and embedding memory. This embodied engagement with place and landscape is also key to the development and placement of media; sound is essential to the live experience and through which his audiences experience any final GPS located composition. Although still using locative media apps, Richard’s practice has evolved using handheld blue tooth speakers and silent disco kit as part of a live performative walking experience.

Richard recently co-edited and contributed to “Breaking the Dead Silence” a collection of essays published by Liverpool University Press on memoryscapes and obscured histories in the aftermath of the toppling of the Colston statue in Bristol. He recently undertook a research fellowship in south Australia walking the thread of empire and botany.  Richard’s current project  ‘Finding Country’  attends to the landscape and built environment of North Somerset (UK), terraformed by enslavers and colonial extraction. The project is a ‘walking-with’ the legacies of wealth extracted from colonised lands and peoples manifested in the English countryside and country house. In the project Richard draws on and seeks to articulate his walking research in Adelaide, South Australia, walking and asking questions, re-telling stories back into the landscape

41’57” 19.7MB

Download notes from this interview:

Andrew Stuck is in Sweden at Björkö-Konstnod (BKN) in the northern Stockholm archipelago to join the Walking as Practice artist residency of which he is going to be part. Among the artists there was Janice Jensen from Germany, whose work Andrew has come across since Janice was shortlisted for the 2023 Marŝarto Award for Walking Art. Janice has just demonstrated a “Drawing by Walking” mechanism that she has created as the first step in an elaborate process to draw the walks she makes.  Their conversation takes place on a walk along an unsealed road early on, on a July evening.     20’24” 9.6MB

Download notes from this interview:

The people Andrew Stuck interviews tend to be talented, resourceful and resilient or a combination of each, one might describe them as ‘can do’ people. Saira Niazi is not only a ‘can do’ but is a ‘has done’ and ‘will do’.  She has worked in many roles, between jobs, a dozen or so years ago she set up Living London, leading walking tours that she called ‘Wanderings’, seeking out ‘hidden gems’ in part to satisfy her own curiosity and finding others to share her discoveries.

Saira is a recent recipient of a Winston Churchill Fellowship and travelled to New York and San Francisco seeking out what she calls ‘Renegade Guides’ those have a similar passion for exploration and sharing knowledge.  She has returned home to Tooting in south west London and written and published the ‘Renegade Guide Handbook’.     22’51” 10.7MB

Download notes from this interview

For many the Covid pandemic has been a difficult time to live through, not least for the residents of Melbourne in Australia, who may well have had to endure the longest lockdown of any city. For Dan Koop, a curator and producer, the lockdown appears to have actually given him an opportunity to explore new ways of working, reconnecting with his immediate neighbourhood environment, as well as tackling common societal issues from a local perspective. Andrew Stuck catches up with him midway through an extended European trip of Dan’s on a sunny afternoon in July 2024. They are walking together along an unmade road on the outskirts of Girona in Spain. 20’12” 9.5 MB

Andrew Stuck is walking through the streets and around the battlements of the fortified city of Girona in Catalonia, Spain. He is in the company of Molly Wagner an American who has lived in Australia for many years.  Neither of them are certain of finding their way. Molly is the author of “No Trespassing”, a sumptuous photographic journal of a number of long walks that she made through urban, suburban and rural New South Wales. They are both attending the Walking Art and Relational Geographies conference organised by Clara Gari of Nau Côclea, at which Molly will be talking about the formation and growth of Australian Walking Artists, for which she is a convenor. 27’25” 12.9 MB

Download items mentioned in this interview:

Andrew Stuck is on Sutton Heath in Suffolk with Henry Fletcher, author, way finder and wilderness guide turned walking artist. He is fairly confident that he is not going to get lost as Henry has more than a decade’s experience in guiding people in Iceland in much harsher conditions than they are encountering on a Spring day in May.

With the help of Jay Simpson a fellow trail maker and workshop facilitator they authored the Banff Mountain Literature Award-winning “Wayfinding in the Westfjords” along with a companion trails map and two other guides to the local ecology and walking conditions. The books include reflections and responses from scores of participants who have taken part in artistic residences and trail restoration workshops that Henry and Jay devised and led . By raising money for the publication through a kickstarter crowd funding campaign they were able to hire a book designer, a botanical illustrator, as well as translating the books. 

It turns out that although they have created far more than a walking guide with a book filled with beautiful photographs and artwork, Henry as a self-proclaimed way finder is not someone inclined to use a guidebook or to follow a well marked trail, so Andrew is intrigued how in creating this suite of books and map may have modified Henry’s own practice. Similarly Henry is an enthusiastic supporter for the world trails network, for which he created a film festival and a series of artist talks.

32’31” 15.2MB

Download notes of times mentioned in this episode:

Image credits: Julie Wegner, Jay Simpson, Henry Fletcher

The Portuguese partners in the Walking Arts and Local communities project are from the University of Minho in Guimaraes directly working with two educators in particular, Natacha Antão Moutinho and Miguel Jorge Alves Miranda Bandeira Duarte.  Since 2018 they’ve been working with Geert Vermeire from Belgium on a week long residency called The Walking Body in which international walking artists join graduate students.

Andrew Stuck has been lucky enough to have met Natacha and Miguel at different events over the last few years. It is hard to separate them, and many have made a similar mistake to that of Andrew, in thinking that they are man and wife or artistic collaborators. However, they each have partners and families of their own, and it’s only as educators that they work together. Each is an enthusiastic and passionate walking artist in their own right.

Somehow, Andrew managed to find a window in their busy schedule during The Walking Body 5 to walk out with them in the vicinity of the university’s newly opened campus. It stands beside now redundant leather and textile washing tanks, with channels and tunnels with rushing water still flowing through a once busy industrial site. 22’57” 10.8MB

Download items mentioned in the interview:

Author and long-distance walker Stephen Ford and Andrew Stuck are walking through woodland beside open fields with traffic on the A3 rushing past half a mile away.

It’s not the first time that Stephen and Andrew have met to record an interview. Six weeks ago they had walked across Esher Common together and much to Andrew’s embarrassment he discovered that his voice recorders’s hard drive was full to capacity, so much of the interview wasn’t actually recorded.

Stephen forgave him this ‘schoolboy error’ and this time proposed that they walk on common closer to Claygate.  As you will discover from their conversation, there’s a necklace of publicly accessible common in this part of Surrey, that is much frequented by dog walkers and joggers. The interview opens with Stephen talking about where it is they are walking. 21’59” 10.3MB

Download notes from this interview:

It is the first time that the 4 year Walking Art and Local Communities project partners have met in person and the excitement is palpable. Developing the partnership and writing a successful proposal to the EU for funding to support Walking arts has taken quite a few years.

Andrew Stuck is with Fred Adam one of the team from Gigacircus, the French partners in this pan European project. Fred and Andrew have met before and they have known each other for several years both sharing an interest in geolocated media, sound walks and digital storytelling 

They are not exactly sure of their whereabouts having taken a cable car to a scenic point above the regional city of Guimaraes in north east in Portugal. They are in luck as they begin their conversation just as a church bell strikes.

23’30” 11MB

Download notes of items mentioned in this interview

Andrew Stuck and Sinwah Lai have been in Psarades in north-western Greece attending the Walking Arts Encounter where the temperature hasn’t dropped much below 40°C. What it means is that Andrew interviews walking artists, either in the shade or as late into the evening as possible. Fortunately, the days are long, but the heat is exhausting.

Both Sinwah and Andrew have been feeling the heat as they set out from her guesthouse on a short walk. Sinwah has been to Psarades before and has returned because she has fond memories. Sinwah is a Chinese artist from Hong Kong, but she’s travelled quite a bit including to study in Taipei in Taiwan and to Utrecht in the Netherlands. She hadn’t been back to Hong Kong, but now feels it’s the time for her to do so, to try to establish a community of Walking Artists there. 18’54” 8.9MB

Download notes of items mentioned in the interview: