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Mythogeography and Walking

Walking may seem like an unregulated, 'natural' or 'spontaneous' activity. In fact it is determined by paths and signposts, maps, our tendency to pick a destination, property ownership, how our parents walked, the shoes we're wearing… and so on.
 
It also offers us all a unique way to see the world around us in all its layered complexity (history, archaeology, architecture, aesthetics, myths and stories, collective experience, social engineering, shops and consumer opportunities, entertainment, heritage.)  Triarchy titles in this area have a huge number of suggestions and possibilities for understanding and re-evaluating the way we walk through our cities, edgelands and countryside. Read more about Mythogeography and Counter-Tourism and about our Walking titles.

​Walking in a time of Virus - read suggestions from Phil Smith for how to use the opportunities afforded by these extraordinary times to disrupt our habits, conventions and expectations around walking.
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Goblin Queens and Qualia Knights - Phil Smith

Repurposing the codes of chivalry and courtly love in an existential crisis​
Goblin Queens and Qualia Knights is a little book of comfort for people who are troubled by the way that life is being hollowed out by:
social media, life on the phone, climate change, populist politics, banality, hyper-capitalism, AI and so on.

It suggests clever and simple ways to remain true to yourself, even to be yourself, in the face of a thousand pressures to become someone else. It makes life into a pilgrimage of purpose, humour, awareness and compassion.
It offers a contemporary myth and initiation and a range of simple somatic practices that could change your life. 
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It can be used by anyone who wants to lessen their digital dependence and deepen their connection with their surroundings. It can be used by coaches, therapists and teachers - as well as walking artists, writers and anyone with a general interest in movement and somatics or politics and pedestrianism.

Key  Mythogeography and Walking titles ...​
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With an array of sparks, projects,  prompts, catapults, drifts and exercises, Sonia Overall invites us to see walking as a creative writing method. She sets out a particular form which she calls walking-writing and suggests ways to gather materials, submit to the sensory, explore your home like a tourist, and scour the streets like a metal-detector.
walk write (repeat) is a manual for creative writers, but it can readily be adapted by artists in other media. Use it  to generate ideas, create text and read differently.
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On Walking... and Stalking Sebald: A guide to going beyond wandering around looking at stuff  ~ Phil Smith

On one level On Walking describes an actual, lumbering walk around Suffolk. On another,  it sets out a kind of walking that the author has been practising for many years and for which he is quietly famous. It's a kind of walking that burrows beneath the guidebook and the map, looks beyond the shopfront and the Tudor facade and feels beneath the blisters and disgruntlement of the everyday. Those who try it report that their walking [and their whole way of seeing the world] is never quite the same again.
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Rethinking Mythogeography: in Northfield Minnesota
John Schott (photography) and Phil Smith (text)

Phil Smith has updated his thinking on Mythogeography in ​Rethinking Mythogeography.  Mythogeography is influenced by, and draws on, psychogeography – seeking to reconnect with some of its original political edge as well as with its more recent additions. As well as being a pedestrian pastime for any interested walker, it's also a serious academic discourse, engaging with subjects like geography, tourism studies and spatial theory. But it also draws on the forgotten, the overlooked, the occult and the anomalous.

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Walking Art Practice: Reflections on Socially Engaged Paths  ~  Ernesto Pujol

Combining elements from an art book, field journal and walkers' manifesto, this is a text for performative artists, art students, and all who walk as cultural activism. Walking Art Practice is a collection of intimate reflections by artist Ernesto Pujol, which bring together his experiences as a former monk, performance artist, social choreographer and educator. They serve as a provocation, walkers’ manifesto and teaching guide.
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Walking Stumbling Limping Falling: A Conversation
​Alyson Hallett & Phil Smith

For about 9 months, two walking-authors/artists – Alyson Hallett and Phil Smith – found themselves wrestling with not being able to walk normally. They wrote to one another about it and, amongst other things, reflected on: prostheses ~ waddling ~ Butoh ~ built-up shoes ~ walking in pain ~ bad legs ~ vertigo ~ falling (and fallen) places ~ hubris ~ bad walks ~ scores for falling down ~ walking carefully ~ disappointment. This is their conversation. From it, there emerges an 'Alphabet of Falling', a sustained reflection on the loss of normal capabilities, anecdotes and autobiographical stories.

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You might also be interested in our other subject areas ...
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Education, Health & Public
Sector Management

Fiction, Drama & Poetry
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Leadership, Innovation &
​Organisation Management
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All Mythogeography and Walking titles ...

A Sardine Street Box of Tricks  
Anywhere
​Bonelines
Counter-Tourism: A Pocketbook 
Counter-Tourism: The Handbook 
Desire Paths
Enchanted Things (A Photo Essay)
Guidebook for an Armchair Pilgrimage
Mythogeography 
On Walking
Rethinking Mythogeography
She is the Sea
​Stone Talks
​​The Architect-Walker
The Footbook of Zombie Walking
The MK Myth
​The Pattern
walk write (repeat)
Walking Art Practice
​Walking Bodies
Walking Stumbling Limping Falling
Walking's New Movement
Ways to Wander
​​​Ways to Wander the Gallery