Walking the Land is an artists collective that has been active in and around Gloucestershire’s Stroud Valleys since 2002. More recently our network has grown with active members from across the UK, Canada and Australia.
We link landscape, community and art through projects, research, exhibitions, installations, writing and shared walks with numerous artists, other professions and wider communities. We have
a common interest in the use of landscape for social change, public engagement, critical debate and creative forms of community activities.
Upcoming Events
November 6th – First Friday Walk : This months walk will be lead by Rachel McDonnell.
Rachel has recently spent some time in the Walking the Land Gingerbread House, built as part of the Growing Places project, and currently located near Bisley. The walk will explore the area around the Gingerbread House, and will include some steep and muddy sections. We will be out for around 3-4 hours through the afternoon, thinking about getting to know places which are near to those we know very well, but which, somehow, we haven’t ever quite come across. We will also stop at the Gingerbread House, perhaps for a cup of tea and a biscuit (gingerbread?) – which might be of interest for people who would potentially like to spend some time there themselves, immersed in the landscape which we will be walking in. Remote walkers are invited to walk, explore and get to know a place near to their everyday, within around 3-5 miles of home, but which either they don’t know at all, or which connects places they know well, but is not a route they have recently taken, and to think about the edges of the familiar.
Please note: All participants attend at their own risk.
Last Tuesday online Café, 19:45 hrs 24th November 2026 (London time).
Janette Kerr will introduce the year-long ‘Deep Encounters’ project involving 14 artists working in different areas/locations. Working collaboratively, but from different parts of the world. The project is seen as an exercise in deep mapping; an intensive look at a particular place that might include geography, history, and ecology. Some call the approach ‘vertical travel writing’, while archaeologist Michael Shanks compares it to the eclectic approaches of 18th- early 19thcentury antiquarian topographers, or the psycho-geographic excursions of the early Situationists.
‘…..Places are not stable; they mean different things to different people – even different things at different times. The deep map recognises the slippery identity of place, and seeks to visualise the multiple identities that go towards constructing the human experience of place’. https://wp.lancs.ac.uk/lakesdeepmap/the-project/gis-deep-mapping/
We increasingly need to work in “the curious space between wonder and thought” a space where….“there is no single Disciplinary (in an academic sense) voice” (geographers Stephan Harrison, Steve Pile, Nigel Thrift), …. the: “space–between representation and reality, language and life, category and experience” (feminist philosopher Geraldine Finn).. (see https://www.iainbiggs.co.uk/2014/10/deep-mapping-a-partial-view/)
To receive a regular monthly reminder in your inbox with details of future events please contact wtl@walkingtheland.org.uk