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Tuesday 8th January 2008 5pm - 8pm at London Metropolitan University

Discussion

Chaired by Ben Roberts

Present at this meeting:

Ben Roberts, Programme Co-ordinator, Camden Arts Centre

Serena Korda, artist

Juliette Adair, writer

Clare Qualmann, artist

Louise Howard, artist, Canterbury

Ruth Martindale, artist, MA student, Wimbledon

Pippa Koszerek, artist, MA student, Wimbledon

Anna Chapman, artist, MA student, Wimbledon

John Levack Drever, composer, Goldsmiths

Calum F Kerr, artist

Andrew Stuck, Behaviour Change Consultant, Museum of Walking, Talking Walking, Rethinking Cities

Simon Pope, artist, Cardiff

Viv Corringham, artist

Clive Brandon, artist, MA student Wimbledon

Melissa Bliss, artist

Gail Burton, artist

The following are the main questions, comments, suggestions and issues that arose, which I noted at the time. Not exhaustive.

Common themes arising from artist talks:

Importance of archiving, specifically found objects from walks. What happens to these objects? Possibility of bringing them together.

Everyday

Shared practices

Different approaches to walks – possibility of different walks intersecting

How does collaboration affect your work? (asked to walkwalkwalk)

Political aspects of walks

How walking initiates/opens up a dialogue that is not possible whilst static. Connection between walking and thinking. Especially useful for conducting interviews. Compulsive walking whilst on a mobile phone. Definition of ‘peripatetic’ originating in Socratic philosophy.

How do we want the network to function? What purpose do we want it to serve?

Do we want a wiki or blog?

Have a wiki - a shared space to post information from our meetings, references to books, films etc, details of future meetings etc. No one person to be overburdened with this task, it should be a shared endeavour.

‘Pbwiki’ – has an anti-spam password. This is adequate to solve problem of spam – Simon (and John and Andrew?) knows about this

Admin of a wiki takes a bit of time – need a dedicated team to administer it.

International branches of WAN and ‘penfriends’- Australian Branch to be set up by Lukas Ihlein; Stalker in Italy are also interested; Viv is based in Minnesota.

Gathering bibliographies

‘Endnote’ free software is good for sorting out bibliographies – Anna knows about this

Perdita Phillips has compiled a walking art bibliography of 8000 entries – *Andrew will contact her for permission to link

Attempt an analysis of shared fields within walking art. It is time to refine the field.

Identifying research questions within the field for AHRC funds. Problem of identifying legitimate research questions that don’t ‘dissolve’ the actual art work.

Meeting 3 or 4 times a year

Other venues for meeting. Next meeting at Camden Arts Centre or Goldsmiths College

The network as a platform for inviting people to talk, enabling us to invite those outside of ‘strictly artists’, e.g. urban planners

‘Active Transport Champions’ – Andrew’s project - defined ‘Active Transport’ as that involving cycling and riding buses (also walking presumably). People are being discouraged from using buses in London as they are now too crowded. Due to children having free bus passes and using them to go just one stop.