Writing the Map

Writing the Map

Calling walkers, writers, artists and psychogeographers: Writing the Map is interested in your experiences of journey, your thoughts about home, and the distance between the two. Chris Sanders writes.

‘Wanderer, your footsteps are the road and nothing more;

wanderer, there is no road, the road is make by walking.’

Antonio Machado

The UK has the highest rate of internal migration in the EU, (3.5% of population move annually). Our identity exists in the places we come from, live in and our journeys between the two. The journey is an opportunity for exploration and reflection.

Writing The Map is inspired by a 192 mile walk, between the artist’s place of birth and present home, exploring ways identity is linked to journeys past, present and future. Maps – both digital and 2D – enable us to undertake journeys of discovery. They are objective representations of landscape, inviting us to follow prescribed directions and routes. They also enable us to reflect and organise our knowledge to better understand and share it.

Writing The Map draws on psychogeography to subvert traditional mapping to unearth and capture objective and subjective experiences of walking and landscape, linked with perceptions, associations and sensory responses as well as historical and cultural ones.

The project aims to establish a set of protocols to enable walkers to consider how our journeys, whilst mediated by maps, are subject to personal, political and cultural contexts, all of which impact on our experience and perceptions.

During June & July, I will be undertaking 7 walks between Brighton and Bristol, following OS maps, to develop and test protocols, and capture this information to create a series of experimental narrative maps. These will be shared via a series of interactive blogs, print and social media. Participants will be invited to take part in two workshops/walks (one starting around Brighton, one around Bristol), where participants will be invited to undertake a walk using the protocols to explore their relationship to landscape, to reflect on observations and capture their insights and thoughts to create their own narrative maps. Following the workshops, I will support participants to develop their work, to contribute to the Writing the Map blog, and to participate in a spoken word event – one to be held in Bristol and one in Brighton.

If you’d like to get involved – walking, writing, sharing your thoughts, please get in touch. Or, if you know of anyone who may be interested, please pass the information on. Contact Chris Sanders at: createlearnconnect@gmail.com. Mobile: 07738 763 161. Website: Write The Map. @ChrisSand12 #writingthemap. Facebook: writingthemap.

Also in: Arts News