Tunnel Vision - Walking the Inner Ring Road Tunnels

The Ring Road tunnels opened again today after six weeks of closure and the city’s petrol powered traffic can once again circulate at will – at least until 10pm when the curfew sounds.

Earlier in the year, friend-of-the-festival Roxie Collins suggested an excellent walk: a night-time pedestrian stroll through the tunnels. If approved, it would be a rare opportunity to walk in the usually exclusive domain of the motor car. Roxie is a fan of car parks and car spaces in general and her tour for the festival year visited the city’s landmark car parks and subways. Going by the quick take up of tickets, many others were too. I thought I’d try to arrange it, thinking how long it might be before another opportunity to do this (safely) came around. The earliest Still Walking festival featured a walk led by Joe Holyoak, talking about the Inner Ring Road from a planner’s perspective – a walk that stopped short of entering the tunnels themselves. This would be an elegant way to complete that missing section. Indeed the festival has a recurring obsession with the ring road: in March this year, Glen Stoker accompanied a dozen people around the Middle Ring Road. And in 2017, the festival will feature an epic trek around the outer ring road…

My email efforts to contact the BCC tunnels boss or head of tourism at Amey led nowhere unfortunately, even though I pitched the benefits of having a public access event to offset the inconvenience of tunnel closure. However, a week later an email arrived from a colleague: Amey were now advertising a guided walk by Construction Manager Kevan Lambe. Anyone was welcome so long as they had full PPE ie., hard hats, hi-viz and work boots. I signed up immediately and scrambled some kit together.

Two weeks later I was sitting in a container office near Spaghetti Junction, receiving the H&S training, evacuation procedure, general tunnel tips and tricks and most interestingly for me a slide show of Queensway history (also called Tunnel Vision) and tunnel facts and figures. During Kevan’s presentation, the assembled group learnt that the concept of the Ring Road dates back to 1944, while the country was still at war. There are times when you have to respect that kind of commitment to the Forward motto. Likewise the 1971 launch date, which came six years ahead of schedule. And everyone knows the Queen’s blunder in naming the jewelled  carriageway…

Some intriguing details emerged before we set off to explore: when the tunnels closed last year, people tended to stay on longer in the city after work, shopping or heading to restaurants and bars having left the car at home. Businesses reported an increased turnover, which was maintained even after the tunnels reopened. Kevan also detailed the various work being carried out in the tunnels: new LED lighting that varies in intensity throughout the day, actually becoming dimmer at night to minimise the contrast from driving from darkness into an illuminated environment. Ventillation and fireproofing is improved and there is now support for emergency services radio communications. Video cameras automatically detect incidents or collisions and email the relevant personnel and switch on an in-tunnel voice alarm / public PA system. Leaks have been fixed.

The feeling of walking in the tunnels is very much that you shouldn’t be there. Not from a permission perspective but rather that walking in the spaces I’ve previously watched thousands of cars zipping through just plain feels dangerous. When driving through previously, I’ve noticed doors on the left hand wall leading somewhere… on this walk we entered such a door, ascended a spiral staircase into a cavernous plant room, with vents opening up to the carriageways below. All along the tunnel, on cherry pickers and magic carpets men work through the night on overhead gantries and fixtures. An occasional beeping means such a platform is descending and we need to watch out. Former access gates from the surface have been sealed off, being infiltrated by the curious while the tunnels are closed. Bags of fireproofing powder lie in piles, waiting to be sprayed onto the surfaces. We’re in there for around an hour, with a full commentary on every aspect – details usually missed completely by motorists as they whizz beneath the city in a matter of minutes.

The final pix courtesy of Andrew Kulman – follow his Twitter stream of 60s /70s Brumicana @AndrewKulman

Why Waylosing?

Bill Aitchison on the Waylosing walk: it sold out in a few days but we hope to rerun it later in the year in conjunction with the wayfinding tour.

The idea of leading a waylosing walk may sound a little perverse but it not just a joke, for it comes from the solid principle that if you never go out of your way you never discover new places. I’m aware the terms ‘losing your way’ or ‘being lost’ have negative connotations, they sound like a problem, like a lack of something, but these states almost never exist in an absolute form, we almost always have some idea of where we are: which country, city and neighbourhood we’re in. Even Christopher Columbus landing on and ‘discovering’ the the Americas, which he mistook for Japan and China, was not completely lost. He knew he was five weeks sail west of Europe.

I’m not planning anything quite so ambitious as this for the voyage on the 2nd August in Birmingham with Still Walking. More modestly, I’d like to share some techniques and ideas which I use to put myself off my habitual tracks. This walk will therefore not follow a predefined route that pushes us ever further into obscurity, the route will instead be decided in the moment depending on who is taking the walk, which areas we are unfamiliar with and what we find. In this way it will be about the process of waylosing, the decisions we have to make and how we can make sense of the journey. Since most of us on the walk will know the city to a greater or lesser extent, the chances are we will not be well and truly lost but we might well come across a few unfamiliar streets, talk about what we find, what it means to not know where you are and not know where you are going. 

I’m excited that this walk has been paired with a wayfinding walk as I see the two of them as dealing with very similar issues. I did some waylosing experiments in Beijing recently, as it is easier to get lost in a foreign country, and I found I had to think a lot about how we navigate and find our way. It was necessary, for example, to choose the right area to get lost in, to locate landmarks in order to lose them and to keep a detailed mental map in order to know when it had been irreparably mangled. Like the unruly younger sibling then, this waylosing walk is cut from a similar cloth but attempts to know the rules only in order to break them.

Finally on a practical note, the walk is going to take some time and we will try to include a stop for light refreshment on the way, though obviously that depends on where we end up. There will be quite a bit of walking involved, so dress appropriately, and the plan is to find our way back into Birmingham City Centre by 6PM at the latest. You can bring phones but using their map function is absolutely forbidden!  

Bill Aitchison

Thanks Bill; I’m secretly hoping we do find some lost continents.

You can read more about Bill’s other events over at his blog.

Lost Rivers of London 2: The Neckinger

The Neckinger is an odd river, both flowing out of and back into the Thames, making an island of an area south of the river currently occupied by South Bank, that for a while was called Jacob Island. The river has completely been built over – qualifying it as ‘lost’ and is the second such river of London along which I have invited people to follow the course. The idea is that there’s plenty of clues of the missing river and simply it’s fun to look for them. Where they don’t appear plentifully, there are other surface details to be intrigued by.

This year, we’d increased out number by personal recommendation from those who attended previously. I sense there’s a real thirst for group observation, with no real agenda of what’s worth noticing. Explanations of curiosities are approached by layered comment and observation. Perhaps we don’t get to the bottom of a ‘mystery’ but the shared experience of suggesting explanations, regardless of background – is a very satisfying experience.

The routes are all determined by Tom Bolton in his book London’s Lost Rivers. A few weeks ago, one of our river walkers pointed out that Tom was now marketing his own river walks. Ours are all-invite only (or by recommendation), done for the sheer fun of seeing what we encounter along the way and seeing who turns up for the event and the ad hoc ‘conference’ afterwards. I feel that at some point over the next five years, our paths will cross…

Thames level

The premise of the book is that it charts the route of the river, suggesting evidence such as street names, landscape geography, public art and the occasional glimpse of the river itself. Where there is nothing to report, Tom comments on the history of the buildings, especially when there is a literary connection or grisly crime. I decided after last year’s Fleet trip to drop reading aloud most of these comments when we noticed that there were all sorts of bits of river evidence to be found that wasn’t being reported in the book. This may well reflect the publisher’s influence rather than Tom’s observations and I accept there is a finite market for people who want to peer into grids in the middle of the road. But for me, the walks are supposed to be about rivers rather than Marlowe’s bar brawls. As such, a lot of the walk was spent walking over the area we knew the river to be, where this was possible, looking for grids that may reveal the Neckinger. There is a real moment of intrigue when these usually ignorable grates afford an aperture into that lost watery world, like glimpsing a phantom.

For whatever reason, the Neckinger is largely invisible in any form, even climbing down to the banks of the Thames doesn’t reveal the outlet. There’s some evidence in the street levels and names of a river bank, then at the half-way point our discovery of the river window grid. There’s plenty else to keep us occupied, personal favourites being a fortress-like school wall composed of previous rubbled walls and a cluster of houses with a bizarre outline that hints at their mediaeval origins. Finally we finally see our river named in the Neckinger Estate where an archway into a block of flats seems to deliberately straddle the underground river, according to Tom’s map. We’d have missed all of these delightful moments in our usual movements through this city, and only one of these is actually in the book. Pub breaks are determined by occasional, rainfall – seems right.

At the end of the walk, at St Saviours Dock, we finally see the Neckinger snaking over mudflats and back into the Thames. Stats show our speed was a leisurely 1 mile an hour. On the other side of the rive, wholly unnoticed by our party, the first stage of the Tour de France was entering the city.

Photos by Helen Frosi ‘cept the one above.

Still Loitering

Still Walking gets full value from the intern: Danielle helps with the usual admin and event behind-the-scenes stuff but she’s also doing the opening event – no pressure there, then!

“Hello I’m Danielle and Ill be leading the opening walk of the new Still Walking festival on Fri 25th July: Still Loitering. It’s hard to pin a definition to loitering, but it’s often seen as spending at least fifteen minutes in the same place without intention, according to officials… when pushed, that intention really translates as ‘commercial intention’. This free event invites participants to contemplate whether loitering ought to be forbidden especially when the rhetoric of Birmingham’s homeless community is considered. Lots of places in Birmingham forbid loitering; and once you have seen one sign, it makes it easier to spot others in the city. Here are a few:

Working as a collective flash-mob, the purpose of this opening event is to purposely ‘loiter’ in places which forbid it to encourage authority to challenge our static presence. Who will feel more threatened; ourselves or our observers? I’m really looking forward to the event and I hope that you’ll join in to discover and experience your own definition of loitering. The larger our group, the more powerful our impact.

I come from a performance background, having just graduated* from the University of Birmingham’s Drama and Theatre Arts degree programme. Studying for my degree particularly ignited my interest in political theatre and political performance and how these practices are very different from each other; with political theatre being set in the institution of the theatre and political performance happening around us every day from begging and busking to even putting on make-up and taking ‘selfies’. I see this opening event as a political performance, particularly reflecting Augusto Boal’s Invisible Theatre, where the spectators of a particular action are not aware that it is a performance that has been organised and agreed on beforehand.

As well as facilitating this event, I am also Still Walking’s first festival intern which involves developing events with Ben and guides and dealing with event logistics and promotion. My first association with the festival was last summer where I was conducting market research for Flatpack Film Festival. I came across Still Walking’s Twitter account, and thought that this is a festival I really want to get involved in. I messaged Ben and volunteered for various walks. Among these was David Helbich and Shila Anaraki’s “Drag and Drop”. In this, audience members were instructed to wear ear plugs and remain silent, led through streets in one of two separate groups, before being individually dropped at carefully choreographed corners. After a few minutes standing alone, they were picked up again after five minutes or so by another guide and dragged to the next drop-spot. Ben experienced this for the first time in beautiful Brussels – and the back-streets of Birmingham on a dark autumn evening provided a very different experience! However, this event was certainly the first time I found myself consciously loitering. The experience made me acutely aware of myself and the environment around me, and it made me wonder how powerful a collective of loiterers would be to an unsuspecting public”.

Thanks Danielle! Can’t wait to see how this turns out. Don’t hang around, book tickets today.

•with a First

What Even is Free Seeing?

Now that more than ten people have asked me ‘What even is Free Seeing?’ I thought I’d better write a short blog post to explain it a bit more. Francis Lowe got in touch during the last Still Walking festival to tell me about his notion of ‘found places’ – to be regarded in the same vein as Duchamp’s found objects. Both the objects and the places were of course already there but the creative activity is announcing that there’s something further to be known about them, without actually altering anything. A small group of us wandered around Digbeth in the shadow of the viaduct arches, into Forklift workshops, across open land, reframing the world, tipping the horizon and generally being adventurous about visualising what was around us. Digbeth is already quite a bizarre place that naturally invites surreal interpretations.

It’s a recurring theme of the festival: people see the world differently. Indeed there’d be no festival if that wasn’t the case. It’s an intriguing moment in the walks when the guide describes why particular spot is relevant and yesterday we heard a different take on the same location from somebody else.

Francis’ theme is what the actual moment of seeing is comprised of, what we are actually doing to observe or notice something and how we can then be creative about it. We usually don’t need to be, so the subject never comes up. It helps to know that he teaches animation – a lot of the techniques of framing a moving image are appliable here.

All of this may involve looking over walls, lying down (mats provided!) remaining static, panning left to right, entering narrow apertures, looking at archaeological evidence, sitting in a croft and filing it all in an internal gallery. Advanced user may later get into testing deja vu, attention rehearsals, refining gut instinct, testing the edge of danger, losing found objects, learning to get lost and possibly a visit to moon as found object.

Tickets are £5, there are at time of writing 4 left, but once you learn the technique it’s yours to keep forever and to do anywhere.

Click here to buy tickets

This is Freedom – Amerah Saleh, Sipho Eric Dube and Alisha Kadir

Last year I ran a guided tour workshop for The Foundry, the REPs’s emerging professional performer platform, to encouraging thinking about city spaces as potential stages. We generally don’t spend much time standing still in the urban environment but if you do claim the space as your own, its rhythms and sense of the place quickly emerges. People will ask you questions – usually the way to the station – because they sense you belong there. Watching the hundreds of short stories unfold around you can give the impression (as a local playwright once claimed) that all the world’s a stage.

‘This Is Freedom’ by Amerah Saleh and fellow performers Sipho Eric Dube and Alisha Kadir responds to my original challenge. We ran a theatre promenade piece in the very first Still Walking and I’ve been keen to stage the next one ever since. The festival’s approach to commissioning new walks is to offer support where needed to make the event happen. That can mean anything from co-authorship of the event to just doing the risk assessments and tweeting about ticket sales. The theme of their piece is ‘freedom’: what that actually means and whether you yourself have it in an ethical, political, cultural, legal, mental or environmental sense. So freedom is what I’ve given them – when I see their performance on the night, that’s when I will be able to tell you more about it.

I know that ‘This Is Freedom’ draws from existing characters, narratives and ideas, reassembled and re-presented to respond to specific spaces. I’m looking forward to seeing these places as I know them transform into something entirely different. I know they are going into one of my favourites too: the ‘water gardens’ area behind the old Central Library, a space that a diverse demographic has already planted its flag into. I’m thrilled that Madin’s creation will see at least one more use before it disappears forever.

They’ve chosen to start it at sunset too, while most of the other guides are racing to avoid being caught out in the shadows. Join me for this bold and challenging premiere at 6pm, Tue 18 March meeting at the underpass on Navigation Street. Very limited tickets available.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/this-is-freedom-amerah-saleh-alisha-kadir-and-sipho-eric-dube-tickets-10639175059

Impermanent Collection – review of The Temporary at ARTicle Gallery

The Temporary is an cross-media exhibition curated by Rachel Marsden at ARTicle Gallery that explores the notion of temporality and the transitory – particularly in an urban context.

The Midlands has seen a cluster of walking art exhibitions recently that seem to have been put on for the benefit of Still Walking: among them Walk On at Mac, Land Art at Mead Gallery and Walking Encyclopedia at AirSpace gallery. A recent addition to this growing collection is Rachel Marsden’s concise exhibition at ARTicle (in Margaret Street School of Art). While not specifically about walking, it certainly covers my favourite themes of moving through a city, looking for patterns and weighing up how we feel about our surroundings. It’s also being held in an often-overlooked public gallery, itself in a jewel of a building that many seem to forget about when characterising Birmingham’s  architecture.

A first sense of the exhibition is of an overwhelming, incomprehensible and uncontrollable Ultrametropolis that leaves its citizens baffled, blitzed and bamboozled, spluttering in its own dust cloud. What initially appears to be a far eastern focus (and knowing Rachel’s Shanghai connections) proves on closer inspection to be international phenomenon. Being constantly being wrong-footed by one’s own city is an experience much closer to home. Birmingham’s long-term unsentimental adhesion to its motto of ‘Forward!’ has variously left in its wake huge, useless viaducts, the demolition of unfinished high rises and campaigns to save iconic buildings scheduled to be razed less than 40 years after their creation. By know, we are used to it: right or wrong, that’s the character of the city. People know that if they return to Birmingham after several years’ absence, they won’t be able to find their way around – not even out of the station. But it’s not quite the same: Rachel knows she won’t be able to find her way round once familiar streets in Shanghai after just one year away. Something has gone wrong, or is at least worth examining. That exploration feels like it should be heavy, dispiriting and pessimestic but it is curiously liberating, spiritual and certainly sublime.

The exhibition is dominated by a large scale work occupying the entire width of the far wall: Lu Xinjian’s City DNA is a dense grid of symbols and shapes that reminds me of an urban planner’s figure ground map – the rendering of buildings as silhouettes and the removal of all other visual map information. The familiarity and character of the city map is changed utterly when see this. Other patterns can then present themselves and the results can be hypnotic, as is the case on this epic scale. Eventually, junctions, roads, rivers and contours present themselves from the seeming chaos and you might even guess which city this is. The exhibition is not wholly about visual art, and If your exploration is to be genuine, then it needs to be done across a variety of scales and media. IPods mounted on top of City DNA play you a selection of further musical and sounds that work as further investigations, and naturally there is a remix to download. Manchester band Part Wild Horses performed an newly commissioned work in the space on the opening night. Modular furniture by Li-En Yeung and Tom Vousden is scattered around the room and you are invited to reassemble it to suit your needs (as happened during the live act). It can be a precarious undertaking and you need to become part structural engineer to make sure your design doesn’t topple.

The remaining walls display the photographers’ work, scrambling and reassembling sizes, locations and even the photographers themselves, better revealing the themes of the exhibition. Some are apparent for their meaning, such as the former Shanghai residents returning to their homes, now rubble, being dwarfed by a wall of tower blocks behind them. Other images are more personal reflections; snapshots of disorientation. Elsewhere, in Cyril Galmiche’s ‘Pudong, Summer’ projection splits Shanghai’s business district into vertical strips, dividing the day up into equal but remixed zones. From nowhere, a boat floats across a band then disappears into another time wormhole. I’m reminded of the installations in last Spring’s mesmerising Metropolis at BM&G and want to see this piece at room height, and with a beanbag.

Credit: Li Han, Hu Yan

The most affecting works are those by Li Han and Hu Yan, whose incredible work appears on the poster for the exhibition. Their intense, technical, isometric renderings cover not only the poster but page after page of what looks like a whole series of graphic novels. Every railing, pane of glass, brick, twig and leaf in the city is given the same minute scrutiny. After living with this reality for a few minutes, staggered by its precision and sheer bewildering scale, it becomes apparent that the scenes are populated by humans too, nearly invisible amongst the endless rows and grids of…stuff.

I bought the badge set and took home two of the beautiful posters. They were short lived, alas: I spilt tea over the first then mistakenly tore up the other to use as a shield for an iron on transfer.

The Temporary is on at ARTicle Gallery until 4 April then at the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, Manchester from 17 April – 11 May 2014

www.thetemporary.org.uk

Vanessa Grasse ‘Movementscapes’, Juncture Dance Festival, Leeds

Movementscapes – Vanessa Grasse

Juncture Dance festival – Sun 9 March 2014

In a festival programme of largely stage based rhythmic movement, Vanessa Grasse’s Movementscapes stands out for being a two mile linear group walk, involving no dancing. The walk functions as a means for festival attendees to locate a remote venue in time for a screening and in doing so to experience Vanessa’s approach to moving through a space. What seems like it should be a simple activity actually prompts many moments of reflection, self awareness, experience of places and spaces and a greater understanding of the city’s natural rhythms. It also manages to do this largely in silence.

How many of the assembled group know exactly what’s in store? After a quick explanation of the event, we are advised not to take photos, nor talk to each other, or to use our phones (cue an urgent phone call being answered at the back of the group).

A familiar guided walk instruction is to cross the road at the prompt of the green man: banal yet also an opportunity to observe the rhythms of the city in action. The walk is prefaced by a split stance / eyes closed exercise which allows us to become gently aware of our own body sense. Not easy on the cobbled slope: I sense a few people other than myself tipping or wobbling. Vanessa invites us to become aware of a space a metre – or just over a metre – above our heads. Specifics like this subtly suggest there’s a precision to her invisible art that we should take seriously.

The first few minutes are spent getting to less busy, more open spots in the city. Our group is quite large and we are taking the Sunday shoppers of Leeds head on. At the first crossing, we are faced off by a family outing of adults and many princess-costumed girls. Our group splits neatly and seemingly automatically in two to accommodate the opposition within a central stream. This doesn’t usually happen, but our group now has ‘hive-mind’.

There’s a quiet grace in seeing her simply pick up a stick as if she’s alone and enjoying the first glorious Spring afternoon of the year. However, three separate entities are observing the moment: the public who occasionally become aware of the strangeness of the group: perhaps not from its size but from subtle clues such as our silence or the twigs clutched in our right hand. The group itself has been instructed to watch for Vanessa’s signals and are always keeping her in sight. The cue is often a ripple effect via others’ motions: from my usual rear position of any group, the cervine presence of Vanessa is often lost in the crowd. The event is being photographed too by a Juncture employee: it’s occasionally a jarring moment to feel aware of more than one of these greater eyes at once.

Walking past a railing, I don’t quite see if she taps the stick along it. The stick is in the right hand to do so. Those ahead of me don’t tap. I do. Those behind me do.

The ripple effect is the only way to follow the instruction of one exercise. We are now used to seeing Vanessa from behind but outside Broadcasting, she stops to face us. The usual guided tour cue is that we are now about to learn something but we know to turn round ourselves. The unvoiced instruction is to walk backwards into the area we have just observed, which we now cautiously do. Our guide is the peripheral awareness of the larger group. We assume we’ll know – more or less – where to stop. Vanessa then lies in the shadow of the monolithic edifice. Some who lie down do so wrongly: they are not looking up with the hulking tiered tower behind them and the difference in the experience is critical. I suspect I may have missed some of the subtle cues along the walk. Before I can get too comfortable, we are shifting again and now closely face the rusted iron surface of Broadcasting Place. The spectacle of many people doing this in a line must surely be comical for those encountering Movementscapes in action but individually this gesture of close wall-facing is saturated with associations and emotions from shameful to terrifying. Choosing to do this demonstrates a willingness to be viewed as a faceless outsider, and there is surely an element of hypnotism in Vanessa’s work. As an amateur geologist it’s occasionally necessary for me to get closer to building facades and it can be an incredibly self conscious activity – nobody looks at building materials so the only response from people is deep suspicion. Here, fortunately, we are in good company and it is the spectator of our group naughty-step that temporarily becomes the outsider.

The walk concludes and I feel I’ve been part of a rare and affecting experience. Being part of any group that is thinking alike, even by instruction, is (for me) a welcome moment. Having experienced it amongst mostly strangers, and wordlessly too makes the experience rarer still. It’s perhaps not the main focus of the walk but for me the most powerful. Also, that I barely talk about the event with anyone: I arrived late and have to leave immediately – the walk is all I have done in the city.

A guided walks as a means to join the dots can sometimes invite problems, especially where the dots are venues where other people’s art is happening. The guided tour in its purest form disregards convenient routes and landmarks to focus on the places that really need to be visited. I’m even slightly suspicious of circular routes – it just seems too convenient and I always sense there better places we didn’t visit for the sake of convenience. It is a joy then to discover the route takes in Vanessaesque spaces in abundance, and indeed it is those rhythms and spaces that make up our city. Since my first Movementscape last September I now see the possibilities of spaces everywhere.

Juncture Dance Festival runs in various locations around Leeds until Sat 15 March

www.juncturedance.com

http://vanessagrasse.wordpress.com/

I Was a Teenage Walking Artist – my visit to Walk On at Mac.

In October 1990 I’d just left home was studying sculpture at Wolverhampton Polytechnic. My first works were walking art pieces – although it would be years later that I’d discover the term and recognise where I fitted in. To establish myself in my new environment, I’d go for long walks in remote areas off the tow path, never quite sure whether I was rambling or trespassing. I encountered sculpture parks of twisted, rusting post-industrial residue that I found more deeply affecting than the minibus trips to Yorkshire I’d been on during my foundation course. It reminded me of a film I’d seen on Channel 4 a year or two previously: Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (ask any walking artist what their favourite film is)

I’d rearrange things in situ, then vex my tutors by announcing that my work for the term was located beside a series of disused M&B pubs six miles away. I was encouraged to instead photograph my sculptures or recreate them the studio. To my regret, I took their advice and it would be ten years or more before my efforts to guide people through these zones would naturally resurface. I’d quickly discovered the gulf between being in a location and creating a representation of that experience for an audience who probably wouldn’t ever see it. When I graduated, I didn’t become a sculptor but I did eventually become a tour guide. There is now no gulf of experience: I am sharing my understanding of the place by taking the audience there and we then talk about it. No need to report back to anyone – though I occasionally blog about it.

Good sculpture but terrible photography (and storage)

Great to see Walking Art in Birmingham on the ascendant! The Walk On exhibition at mac pleasingly spills into every part of the venue allowing many chance encounters (it also seems to move about between visits). For what seems like a unifying medium, the walking artists communicate in radically different ways and focus on different aspects of the event. Some visually represent the route as their art while others report back what they encountered. Others are naturally drawn to map making or the landscape itself and tap into a long established path of walking art.

Hamish Fulton is undiluted walking-as-art. What you find in the gallery is emphatically not the art itself but rather a no-nonsense report of key data from the event. Thus a map of Europe is criss-crossed with epic journeys which merely state the year each walk was undertaken. For him to reproduce the walk requires you to undertake the walk, whether that’s shuffling across a concrete dais in Eastside or ascending Everest. It’s an important foundation for any understanding of the practice: none of us experience the world in quite the same way. Fulton is committed to his cause but I sometimes feel I’d like to know what notes he made on those journeys.

Plan B take a similar approach, beautifully etching digital GPS information of their Berlin walks into perspex that say nothing about the experience or terrain. But within the mechanically etched filigree lines lies a human narrative – regular routes, familiar territory with the occasional foray into the unknown.

Sarah Cullen beautiful drawings do are perhaps plan B’s analogue equivalent. There is no mystery about her process: every aspect of the process is on show. A pencil hangs in a wooden box (intriguingly cut down from what looks like a woodcut print block) which is carried over varied terrains and marks the paper accordingly. We don’t know the geography or the route – we don’t need to. Yet the journeys are there to behold – exposing the fragile rhythmic evidence of a body moving through the landscape.

Simon Pope’s approach is perhaps the most ephemeral and fragile of all the works: a recording of a dialogue between two strangers who shared a journey into unfamilar territory to determine a common ground. Straightforward, yet art like this cuts right to the heart of the human walking experience.

Jeremy Ward takes the interface between bronze age hill figure art and walking art head on. The landscape at White Horse Hill in translated digitally into GPS contours and then again into a laboriously constructed card equivalent. The horse is nearly lost amongst it all. How to respond to something as affecting as being at the Uffington White Horse, connecting with the earliest landscape artists – and maybe earliest walking artists? Ward concludes that we’ll never know why the figure was created, being viewable only from above. Having visited this location recently, and having seen the horse from ground level from several miles away, I can’t draw the same conclusion. Intriguingly, it does disappear from view as you get close to it and only reappers once you are on top of it. I’d love to believe this was intentional.

Rachael Clewlow has a similarly methodical approach, recording in tiny, hand rendered lettering all the things she walks past, and at what time, whether that’s Homebase, a Londis or a roundabout. There are no notes in her notebook, it could easily have been taken from a trade directory. There’s the sense that there’s a code to be cracked to determine what her greater pattern was. Short of retracing her steps, we’ll never know – perhaps that’s the point: the gulf is too wide to ever report the experience accurately.

Perhaps because of my tour-guide background, my favourite works tend to be those by artists who share their en route discoveries and are less concerned with what shape the whole thing made.  Walkwalkwalk’s trails round east London treat ordinary objects found in the street with as much importance as an archaeological dig. They document fleeting encounters with people on flyposters which are then returned to the location. There’s a pleasing circular economy at work.

Richard Wentworth’s photos of the ordinary objects and arrangements he encounters whilst walking revel in the creativity, absurdity and sheer joy of the human condition. Gently inviting the audience to share our minds’ flawed interpretations of the world is a revealing, fragile and humbling business – and in Wentworth’s hands, very very funny.

Each visitor to the gallery will have their own experience of moving through it and different works will get their attention. Their conclusions will all be different. For me, the exhibition prompted the realisation that I steer away from prescriptive heritage industry ‘top-ten must-see’ tours as much as the dogmatic artistic statement that each walk is unique and recording the event is the lesser, even pointless, experience. Lying at various points within those two extremes are the Walk On artists and indeed the whole human experience of moving through the world, looking at it and wanting to say something about it.

Walk On runs at Midlands Art Centre until Sunday 30th March 2014

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Lost Rivers of Birmingham

The Lost Rivers of Birmingham walk has been gestating for around five years. A few of the walks I’m involved with have their origins in semi-joking suggestions for walks, which then prove to be entirely viable. (“Pedestrian Vs Car” was another recent example of this).

I’ve long been aware of London’s now-famous forgotten rivers and have walked the above ground routes. The suggestion that this was possible in Birmingham was initially to tantalise people about their understanding of the city and what was possible. The title of the tour, and the suggestion you should bring waterproofs, appeared on 2008 printed promotional material along with the qualifying caveat ‘sold out’, but at that point there was no tour. Eventually it became apparent that Birmingham did have lost rivers (or at least, brooks and streams), mostly covered over and acting as sewers or storm drains or culverted and out of view from street level. Many are barely a trickle and viewing them requires a certain amount of scrambling over wasteland, peeping over walls and occasional intervention from local property owners or security staff.

Over the last few years, I’ve realised that the content of a guided tour need not be about impressive and magnificent sites (as in the classic notion of sightseeing) and that nearly everything is worthy of investigation. Even the meaningless dribbles of the Cuttle, Hobnail Brook and Griffin’s Brook afford a convincing reason to take a particular route through the metropolis. Obviously, the rivers aren’t as particular as we are about their progression through the city, being informed entirely by physical geography and gravity, or where we have forced them to flow.

The Lost Rivers tour met on the junction of River Street and Floodgate Street in Digbeth: referencing the here-invisible Rea. The Rea is the reason for Birmingham existing, affording its few original residents ready access to food (fish) and water. It hasn’t been useful for either living or industry for a long time (beyond being a drain) and has thus been ‘lost’ for over a century. The river can be viewed over a small bridge on Fazeley Street, a location that also reveals an access point in the form of a vertical metal ladder to the sloping and extremely slippery culvert below. Detritus caught in the rungs of the ladder signals the height to which the usually placid waters can rise: heavy rain quickly transforms this gentle ooze into an angry torrent. The riverside is surprisingly green with trees growing from silted up sand bars but everything that grows here has been brought by the river rather than landscaped.

This however, is not the beginning of the tour proper, which actually begins in Aston. A short train journey later, our small group heads down Thimble Mill Lane towards a rare surfacing of the Hockley Brook. Street names can often be entirely literal documents of the past: here there was once a mill that made thimbles. To power that factory, in a time when a household’s thimble would be in daily use, water needed to be flowing. It’s a simple and revealing exercise to chart the various ‘Mill’ and ‘Pool’ place names and street names with pre-steam metal working and the associated water courses. The Hockley Brook becomes visible for 20 feet, emerging from a tunnel beneath Midland Packaging Supplies on Cheston Lane, in the shadow of the Aston Manor brewing plant. As we watch the river doing nearly nothing, a grey wagtail zips out providing an unexpected flash of yellow. The river also surfaces on Holborn Hill at the lower end of an industrial estate off Long Acre, just about visible at the bottom of a deep culvert behind aluminium railings. An engineer clutching an adjustable spanner emerges from a shed to question our presence – presumably the river attracts few tourists. He is intrigued by our quest and pleased to finally learn the name of this waterway that has been in the background of his working life for years.

The next river encounter is a reaquaintance with the Rea as it heads north in parallel with the Birmingham and Fazeley canal. Before long, it joins the Tame at the logistical web of Spaghetti Junction. The motorist will know this interchange as a road network but it encompasses nearly every form of transport possible: railway, river, canal, pedestrian and cycling towing paths. It is a genuinely inhuman, baffling, sacked landscape. At this point individual exploration is encouraged of the various gravelly hillsides, frayed river banks, scrap metal s, cryptic iron doors, darkened underground shafts, stacked lattice-work construction components, decaying concrete stanchions, grassy aqueducts, zigzagging concrete ramps leading nowhere and intriguing personal ephemera abandoned in the shallow water of the Tame. Of course, all of this is watched over by a gigantic Lady Gaga billboard.

The role of the walker here is unclear. A local company has helpfully provided signs informing cyclists and pedestrians of the correct route through the entirely unlit darkened underpasses and there is the occasional directional clue attached to cages and railings. Many routes appear to be one-way, with signs denying access on the far side of gates through which we have exited the zone. At practically every point it feels hazardous and that we simply should not be there, not least when we encounter a memorial to a ‘fallen’ (murdered) policeman on the towpath. Despite this, there is clear evidence that the area is used for leisure with runners, cyclists and even anglers present. One man settles in the shadow of a fizzing electricity pylon to enjoy his cider. With all the distractions, we lose track of the Tame, which at some point dips beneath the surface to escape the horror.

Once we leave the interchange it is amazing how quickly the environment changes. The devastated landscape and bass rumble of traffic is immediately replaced by sports fields and tranquil woodland. A nearby lake in a park is populated by swans, coots and a tree-full of cormorants. A troop of Fly Agarics sit beneath the silver birches.

We pick up the path of the Tame further on and at Holford Park Industrial Estate we are even afforded our first untrammeled riverside walk – for a few meters – on Tameside Drive. We are now following the river as it flows naturally across the surface of the land, and the quest feels like it is done.

Walk the Middle Way

Last year, the fastest selling tour in the Still Walking festival was Joe Holyoak’s Walk the Queensway. At the time, it seemed unlikely that the ring road would attract that amount of interest, but it did and looking back it all makes sense. Everyone in Birmingham has an opinion on subways, car-parking, crossing the road and the dynamics and effect of the ring road on the city. It showed clearly that the format of a guided tour needn’t be about showcasing the highlights of the city and that people want to know about the urban planning process – even if that means witnessing the flip side of Birmingham’s bold post-war experiments.

There is a spirit of irony in choosing to walk the ring road too: this route is all about the car and the marginalisation of everything else. Certainly that means the pedestrian but also the environment, the local economy and ultimately the city itself. Zen Buddhists may also reflect on an unintentional double meaning in the term “Middle Way”.

This week, I met ring road aficionado Glen Stoker of Stoke’s Air Space gallery to walk around Birmingham’s Middle Ring Road. I’d never done it before and despite having maps and a fail-safe ‘keep going’ circular strategy for navigation we actually managed to get the route wrong. By the time we came full circle, it emerged we’d managed to skip a significant part of the full route. But this didn’t really matter as we both agreed that encountering and exploring new spaces was the real purpose of the journey.

The three hour journey allowed us to talk about our interests with occasional tangential excursions as we encountered places where we felt motivated to stop. It was intriguing to see what lay either side of the ring road and how that incision seemed to have shaped the city. Some of these areas I already knew and wanted to share with Glen (making this partially a guided tour) but most were places I had never visited before. Having the express intention of visiting these places over an afternoon seemed to make them more visible. Until today, if there had been another route to walk other than the noisy ring road I would usually do exactly that. It’s interesting to think about why exactly some parts of the city are rarely visited, even for the ardent walking explorer.

A particular highlight that afternoon was a leafy avenue of trees leading to a gated enclosure containing a variety of pipes and ducts emerging from the ground. A concourse of hexagonal moss mosaics led away from this installation. All of this was contained invisibly within the central reservation of the Middle Ring Road. When we reached Highgate, I was able to introduce Glen to the culverted section of Rea, at this point handily accessible by steps. I now include the Rea in a walk wherever possible because of the conversations it naturally leads to, but have by now stopped referring to it as a river.

Many sections were unwalkable. We crossed several times either through piqued interest but mostly through necessity. By the end (or what we thought was the end) we knew the city that bit better but also better understood each other’s approach to walking. Glen was interested that my approach to researching a guided tour starts with simply looking while on the move. As a maker, Glen usually maps the journey for further use or simply as an associated aspect of walking. I generally don’t do this. Neither of us were particularly interested in the ‘game’ aspect of walking for its own sake, but rather for its yields.

Find out more about Glen’s work at

http://www.airspacegallery.org/2007/

http://www.amatterofdeathandlife.blogspot.com

Car vs Pedestrian – review by James Kennedy

A number of us gathered outside the Pershore Street car park for what was going to be our guided tour of Birmingham’s car parks and subways. It’s common knowledge that people don’t come to car parks in these numbers, and in fact, it had been said that some people I had spoken to had been rather incredulous about why this particular walk would be of any interest whatsoever. This particular walk would fit in excellently with Still Walking’s re-mit, a tour taking in areas of the city that don’t get explored, that are far away from the generic guided tours of Birmingham that are on offer. Here we were going to see hidden art, take in panoramic views, get some exercise, and observe the city around us. There would be exploration, and darkness and possible danger. The programme advised that this walk may not be suitable for those of a nervous disposition.

We went into the Pershore Street car park, walking up the stairwell to Level 9. The building on the outside reminded me of Madin’s Central Library, an angular tower of Brutalist concrete, however, going up the tight stairwell, with its stone steps and claustrophobic white walls, I was reminded of the stairwells within the Library of Birmingham. Getting a sense of Birmingham’s future and past. All the while the familiar car park smell of old urine, both sweet and sour choked us as we slowly made our way up to the top.

Going through Level 9 and into an expansive open air car park, towering above the city, we were treated to a fantastic panoramic view of the Birmingham skyline; incorporating on the left more Brutalist facades; the Wholesalers Market, the Meat Market and the Cold Storage, visions of concrete and corrugated iron. The car park had been used for off-site art work curated by the Ikon Gallery, in particular for Oliver Beer’s “The Resonance Project” (2011) working with Ex Cathedra to turn the car park into a giant architectural instrument.

We went back down the stone steps and were told to look at the poem on Level 2 that had been scrawled onto the wall in black biro by what could only be described as a spurned lover; the writing spidery however easy to decipher, the author sitting or perhaps even lying down to cram his plea in the space.

“Show me you love me. Stop the hurt and pain. Then my darling you may have my name. PS If not satisfied, try and try again?”
The poet unknown, but filling the space with dread and confusion. Trying to think at what time this what written in this cold and unfeeling space, in what condition and mind-set, and what happened to the poet afterwards. Where they went, whether in the early hours, lunchtime, tea-time, or the dead of night, the streets rendered lonely, unfeeling and threatening due to unrequited love.
Outside, I noticed a large advertising hoarding proclaiming the re-birth of TSB. Another hoarding advertised the latest instalment in the series of the psycho-geography classic ‘Grand Theft Auto.’ Buses drove past advertising forthcoming ‘Diana’ biopic and disappeared around corners and vanished into subways.

Onto Bromsgrove Street, we made our way to The Arcadian’s car park, billed as ‘award-winning’ on their website. A quick look at the information behind this shows that the car park is under the APCOA banner, APCOA being the ‘UK’s leading provider of tailored parking solutions.’ No perverse odours of urine or sights of empty weed bags and medical syringes here, instead, a powerful aroma of fresh tarmac and new car smell, up-to-the-minute strip lighting and exact low ceilings. Everything clean and sterile, bringing us out into the ever-changing frontages with rhyming names (Iguana Bar, Arca Bar, Bar Risa, Oceanna etc.)

We exited left past Reflex and onto Hurst Street, the Birmingham Hippodrome behind us. The entrance of the Hippodrome has now been copied for the roof to the entrance of the Library of Birmingham, gold shining stars on a black background, giving a sense of a glitzy glamour. As we made our way to Thorp Street behind the theatre, cars went screeching past blasting out young peoples music. Those screeching around would probably go home, fire up Grand Theft Auto, and drive around another city, this time possibly with a bit more money, possibly some whores and definitely some heavy duty weaponry.

Past Chung Ying Gardens and the Stageside Bar, we came to the car park on Thorp Street, designed by Euro Car Parks. An outdoor car park, being neither dark and dingy or utopian-futuristic, this was considered to be “a nice place to park”, with its surrounding brickwork painted white and pink, and with ivy hanging on lattice work. Leaving the relative tranquillity of the Thorp Street car park, we passed another one of Birmingham’s many strip-joints, Scarlets, and went onto Horsefair Parade, greeted by legal high shops and takeaways advertising ‘mighty buckets for one.’
We were now going via Holloway Circus (est 1966) and made our entrance via the Scala Subway, it’s urine smells alarmingly sweet. This subway was created for pedestrians outed in favour of the car, and gave those currently sitting in the public garden area a panoramic view of the inner ring road. Today, observing the gridlocked traffic in this area were a party of cyclists politely eating fruit. In the middle, a piece of public art, a Pagoda , gifted by Wing Yip Plc, with the intention of indicating to the passer-by that this area we were in signified the gateway to the Chinese Quarter. The area was also decorated with a mural by Kenneth Budd which depicted the 1911 horsefair. This place also had the honour of being known as the Cliff Richard subway, as it appears in his ‘Take Me High’ film (1973), which is a firm favourite amongst Birmingham folk.

We emerged from the subway up to Suffolk Street under the Radisson building, and another bus advertising the ‘Diana’ biopic disappeared. The walkway had previously been an extension of the subway underneath the ring road, and had now been filled in, landscaped, and was now a public square, festooned with multi-coloured lights. This had been put in place to get visitors into a ‘Mailbox state-of-mind’ – ready to engage with expensive boutiques and places to eat, which in this case would be known as ‘eateries.’ To our right was the Brunel Street car park, which had been constructed as a transparent red cage, which manipulated the visions of depth for the onlooker.

Walking through Suffolk Street, we got to Arena Central, charmingly named as an ‘Enterprise Zone’ (EZ) and an ‘Inspirational Public Realm’ (IPR) A ‘contemporary’ 14 storey Holiday Inn Express Hotel was scheduled to be built, adding to the towering skyscrapers – looking up at these modern monoliths, one, if gathering enough speed, could run up them like Sonic the Hedgehog or Super Mario and take off into the sky, nothing, in fact, that Grand Theft Auto could do. Exploring the car park below Arena Central, we found that it could really only be described as ‘Post-Apocalyptic’, with fenced off areas and structural issues. We saw what was behind this intriguing no-go-zone after a claustrophobic and tight climb up the stairwell which saw us under the shadow of Alpha Tower. As with Pershore Street car park, car parks and subways had been an influence on the Library of Birmingham, with what seemed to resemble a giant amphitheatre in the middle of the IPR – a would-be gladiatorial arena for those engaging with the EZ, for the while unused and littered with fag-ends and newspapers.

We continued along Fletchers Walk. Over the road we could see the infamous Snobs nightclub, a rites-of-passage for anybody living in Birmingham for an extended time, well-known for it’s 50p shots, sticky floors and excessively drunken drinkers, the name of the kebab shop next door, ‘Top Nosh’ grimly ironic. There was no pedestrian walkway to this glorious destination; however, a makeshift stepping stone had been placed next to the wall where pedestrians could engage in a quick game of ‘chicken’ to the other side to hopefully save their legs.
Past the back of the Birmingham Conservatoire, we saw a fine example of wild plant growth going up the side of the building. We were then led into a barely lit Concrete Zone (CZ), which would take us underneath Paradise Forum, into an arena which was described as being ‘an afterthought into where cars go’, a netherworld of skips, empty cages and hanging wires. A giggling couple ran across our party, possibly embarrassed that we had interrupted their potential lovemaking behind some bins. We came out behind College Subway, next to the back of Paradise Forum and the College of Food and Tourism. We stopped before the entrance to the yellow-tiled subway, where we could hear two people shouting in tongues. This subway was quite labyrinthine, with one exit cordoned off, and we were told that toilets had been up in subways when they were originally built to save people any embarrassment if they got lost and caught short. These toilets for some reason where all now sealed and out-of-bounds, the pervading smell suggesting that people were in fact still getting lost.

We went back on ourselves now, and walked up the steep steps to Paradise Place, an area with disused fountains and street drinkers in various states of disrepair. When the Birmingham Central Library is eventually demolished, it will be interesting to see what happens to this Forgotten Zone (FZ), seeing as it never was given chance to achieve its Full Potential. A logo for Birmingham City Council was stencilled onto an opposite wall, as we made our way behind the back of the old library onto Victoria Square, and onto Barwick Street, where we would be treated to a rare sight of a private car park.

This car park was used solely for the clients of the Royal Bank of Scotland, yet in all honesty, it was a far-cry from the award-winning APCOA car park, the walled hanging gardens of the Euro car park on Thorp Street or even the dystopia of the area under Arena Central. Instead, a simple concrete establishment, with yellow lines for spaces, neat and tidy, almost like a hotel for cars. Outside, two chefs looked at us baffled and confused.

To complete our journey, we walked straight down Livery Street, to get to the car park at Snow Hill. A short climb to just floor 3B, we arrived at our final superb view of the city, a bird-eye view of Hockley and the Jewellery Quarter in front of us, train tracks and an intricate maze of buildings peppered with graffiti. To our right, buildings in states of growth and half-built abandonment set against aloof glass super-structures. The car park here, we were told, should be seen as not just a practical space, but also having the potential for being a Creative Zone (CZ) – this tour underlining the fact that car park and subway design for the future will consider design and aesthetic, with considered access for events and creativity after the space has been used for its main purpose in the day. Of course, with the views of the city stretching out, the hoardings, the architecture, the graffiti, what we had in front of us was a great free museum and art gallery; and with the exploration of the hidden subways and Forgotten Zones, an interactive game for all pedestrians to play.

James Kennedy

Words on Buildings // Laira Piccinato

Buildings, graffiti, carvings, architecture, art, all stemming from the same concept – people feeling the need to make their mark on the planet in their frantic yet futile quest for immortality.

We stood outside St Pauls Church, built in 1776. Here we saw the beauty of the words etched onto the buildings, the beauty of the craft. This was an exercise in making us see. People’s initials were carved on the side of the church; hieroglyphics, engravings and markings, each with their own separate meanings, each with their own stories. Deep engravings had made throughout history to tagging, now not just with permanent markers but also with stones or anything else that came to hand. Along the church, you could see dates and picture when and where the markings were made – D.L. 1809. Z. 1950.
As a species we need to function because of words on buildings. Signage etched on buildings used to indicate jobs for life, materiality on signage. Signs aren’t so much created to be part of architectural design anymore, more so than not they are designed to be disposed of when the business undergoes a re-branding, or the business goes out of business to be replaced by another business.

We were going to look at the hoardings of Taylor and Challen Limited, a Jewellery Quarter based company. Taylor and Challen owned several businesses within the Jewellery Quarter, and each one we would see would have signage emblematic of the era in which the building was owned. We walked down Henrietta Street. Underneath our feet we were invited to look down, and saw that the pavement we were walking on had been supplied by Cakemore Bricks, a Black Country brickmaker, advertising their wares literally, on the street.
Some buildings derelict and unused, some turned into resident quarters or artist studios. On our right, the Derwent Foundry, lettering at the top of the building in yellow, the premises now converted into flats, however, the lettering had been preserved. Underneath an iron bridge, we were invited to touch the bricks and see the chalk marks that had been written on the walls by today’s employees.
Right onto Constitution Hill, we noticed a stained glass window had been covered over with a sign saying that the building was now being used as the Consulate to Pakistan. A door was open, so our party went in and looked inside. We could see that the sign revealed who had put the stained glass window there to advertise their business. It previously had been owned by Barker Brothers, a silversmithers in the Jewellery Quarter. ‘BB’ had also been carved, seemingly unprofessionally, into the wooden bannister.

Back onto the street, we observed the former H.B. Sale Building, designed in 1895 and 1896 for a die-sinker firm, now in a state of disrepair, and despite bearing a golden sign saying ‘China Village Restuarant’, was now actually operating as ‘Syriana’, a Syrian/Lebanese restaurant. Up Constitution Hill, we saw three more buildings built for Taylor & Challen premises, each echoing the typography fashions of the times, one was from 1910, and another featuring ceramic tiling built in 1938, showing that a good amount of money had been spent on this signage.

We went across a side road, which saw an old pub now in use as an off-licence, and then went onto Livery Street. A hoarding erected on our left showed the back of one of the Taylor & Challen premises, its lettering painted or whitewashed onto the brickwork in capital letters, in order to give absolute visibility to passing trains/trade. To our right, the Gothic Vaughton Works, now a backpackers’ hostel, the ‘Gold and Silversmiths’ cladding chipped-off.
Taking a right, we went back onto Cox Street and saw a new-build block of flats, Midland Court, in cast lettering rather than stonemasonry. Walking up Mary Street, away from St Paul’s Square, we saw Bloc, a boutique hotel made out of engineering brick designed by BPN Architects. The name of the hotel appeared three times – visible on the side of the building, above the main entrance, and written in the window. Looking closely, it seemed as though the lettering on the side of the building had been laser-cut out of the casting that was now in place over the door. Simple, but effective, especially in terms of being pleasing to the eye and also in terms of cost.

Going down a side road, making our way, we saw a building for T&J Hughes, a jewellery case manufacturers and patterners, which boasted superb a superbly carved drain. Going onto Vittoria Street, we saw the gothic Birmingham School of Jewellery, established in 1890, and acquired by the old Birmingham Polytechnic in 1989. Onto Warstone Lane, things appeared different. The roads opened up in front of us and suddenly we were bombarded with words and logos. Thin logos of Urban Coffee Company, Coral, Tesco and Subway, all instantly brand-recognisable, and threatening to date on an ephemeral basis, rather than with the classic signage on the establishments that we had seen on our journey.

As was pointed out, permanence wasn’t always a feature in the Victorian era – an old bank, now converted into a generic HSBC or Lloyds or Natwest, simply had ‘Bank (est 1836) carved into its side. As we concluded our walk down the road, we noticed that the buildings were being replaced by a clutch of small independent businesses and jewellers, occasionally branching out into bigger buildings such as Robinson & McEwan and A.J. Smith’s (a variety works.) Opposite Vertu, on the corner of Frederick Street, we saw the Thomas Fattorini Factory, a business established by 6th generation Italian immigrants. The sign stood out against the skyline, and to our right, we could still see the top of the Library of Birmingham, standing out proudly like a Belisha Beacon. I could have made my way home from there. I reckon actually, for the sake of this piece, I should have done.

James Kennedy

@jameskcentral

SOUNDkitchen // SOUNDwalk

I met Iain, Annie and James from SOUNDkitchen last week for a run through of their SOUNDwalk. Edgbaston reservoir lends itself well to a circular walk and an opportunity to reflect on a natural environment at the edge of the city. It’s no coincidence that a Buddhist Monastery is located nearby. The walk includes exercises to get the walkers into the spirit of listening to moments we’d usually overlook. It’s not easy – Iain references the background chatter in our minds, creating to do lists and stupid jokes in our (my) head. But we can train ourselves to focus – we never usually need to.

We have previously downloaded several tracks onto our iPods previously in the day and have been instructed not to listen to them until now. At key points, we are invited to press play and guess what we are listening to, from an up-close recording created earlier by the SOUNDkitchen team. There is always a clue nearby but the answer is often a complete surprise. Elsewhere, we listen to the live sounds of strategically placed microphones around (and in) the reservoir.

SOUNDkitchen provide a few more clues about the event below. About three tickets still remain so act quickly for this one! Tour starts at 5 30pm Friday 20th Sep (tomorrow) at Perrot’s Folly and lasts around 90 mins. We can provide an MP3 player if you happen not to have one. Book here.

Our walk offers an opportunity to engage in an active listening experience of the soundscape of the Edgbaston Reservoir and surrounding area. Aided by the use of sound technology we will augment your hearing ability to discover tiny hidden sounds, listen to distant locations and experience the environment from differing sonic perspectives.

The main purpose of our soundwalk is to encourage walkers to actively listen to their environment. Using some simple listening exercises we will guide participants to explore in detail the changing soundscape of the Edgbaston Reservoir, an important site for nature conservation and a popular urban leisure destination situated close to the city centre.

The walk will be punctuated with several augmented listening stations where, with the use of live microphones and pre-recorded audio tracks, walkers will be able to experience the environment from differing sonic perspectives. Come and hear sounds from under the water, be transported to a distant landmark, discover tiny hidden noises and open your ears to an aural wonderland.

Thanks to: Keith Wraight, Edgbaston Watersports; Rev. Matthew Tomlinson and the Choir of St Augustine’s Church; Jenny Middleton; Jim Harrison BCC Ranger Service

Ladypool Road Through Time // Balsall Heath Local History Society

Every town and region around Birmingham (and any city) has its own cluster of citizens who who are fascinated by how their surroundings all came to be. I think the longer you live in an area, the more questions you ask about it. That might be as simple is ‘where’s a good place to eat’, ‘is there a short cut to the bus stop?’ but eventually turns to ‘what exactly is that old octagonal turret opposite the Select N Save?’. Its easy to get sucked in and eventually become intrigued by everything. You become aware how alive the past is in a contemporary setting.

The various local history societies that form to research, discuss and share this info all have their own ways of presenting what they know. This may be a self published booklet, or the occasional guided tour and that’s where things get interesting with Balsall Heath Local History Society. Their approach is to fearlessly re-enact local stories and moments that you couldn’t possibly know about in full constume and with a very playful sense of drawing the audience into past. I don’t know of any other group in Birmingham who make the experience as fun and often daring as they do and its a thrill to host them for the first time in a Still Walking festival. Themes range from Wartime high drama to a board game inventor, whose creation initially didn’t cut the Mustard…

I’m always looking to connect new audiences to the various walks that run around the city and here’s your chance to do exactly that. Two tours run tomorrow (Sunday 22 Sept) at 11 45am and 2 15pm

Booking can be done here, or get in touch if you would prefer to pay on the day: hello@stillwalking.org

Drag and Drop // David Helbich

This morning I met David Helbich and Shila Anaraki for breakfast at Yumm, freshly in from Brussels, to discuss their event for Still Walking: ‘Drag and Drop’. The drag part refers to you being guided while the drop part means that at some point on the walk, you will be dropped off to await collection by the next passing group. What this allows is a still, reflective moment in a context that rarely happens: standing still in an urban context. I experimented with this on Wednesday (see my blog post) and I regularly find it surprising that literally doing nothing can create such a switch in our feeling and perception of the world. The Drag and Drop principle allows this fragile moment to take place under the carefully choreographed guidance of the two performers.

I’m very interested in the form of a guided tour, and what it means to be in the care of a guide for the duration of the walk. The information content should be accurate and engaging, but the group should cross the road carefully and not block the pavement en route, and many other facors apply. Because we nearly never are in a ‘guided tour’ situation, it’s easy to get it wrong while it happens. For this walk, the event deliberately introduces a stark moment, switching from a dynamic social group experience to an instant independent moment. In writing, that seems straightforward but the reality is that standing still is laden with expectations, anticipation and possibly even friction.

David and Shila are at this moment combing the city for a location for this walk and will be considerate to exactly how people will feel for the few minutes they will be static. For most of the next 24 hours they will be plotting the grid of streets, the route and the moments of exchange and all that it entails. It helps that David is a music composer, for this needs to be a precise experience. If you think you’ld like to experience this walk, please book here.

So where will all of this happen? Certainly somewhere in the city centre but the exact location will be announced later this afternoon (Friday) and if you book a ticket (which is free) you will tonight be emailed the location to meet. We’re expecting 20 – 30 people to be present, and before the two parties set out the procedure will be fully explained. Afterwards, you’ll be invited to comment and contribute to a discussion at a nearby café or bar.

Look forward to seeing you there!

Movementscapes // Vanessa Grasse

Vanessa Grasse is that rare breed: the Sicilian that moves to Leeds. I know of only four and Vanessa is the only movement artist amongst them. I absolutely love Leeds (and have never been to Sicily) and Vanessa’s movement across the earth’s surface to Yorkshire (and on Saturday, Birmingham) perhaps tells you that she is interested in urban spaces, and the rhythms and patterns that occur within them. A recurring them of the festival is ‘how do we feel about our space’ and Vanessa’s approach is perhaps the most hands-on of all. Her walk ‘Movementscapes’ is a series of placements and exercises that reveal the invisible rhythms and emotional connections of the city. How do you feel about the space behind Snow Hill Sation, and how do you move through it? It sounds like an unlikely (and unanswerable) question but Vanessa will provide a means to provide the answers. Birmingham Cathedral and the old Central Library are both en route.

Book now to find out. All the SW events end with a drink and a social moment and this particular one will have the best view of all ;o)

Wait, Look, Drag, Drop

In the week off between the festival weekends I’ve been keeping active with walking activities and adventures. There are always thrilling connections made during the Still Walking festival: people seeing the programme and getting in touch with their ideas. That does mean lots of emails in the morning but after those have been dealt with it’s great to get out and go for a walk (by now, this shouldn’t come as a surprise).

Today I investigated some secret tunnels in the city (more on that later in the week), photographed the William Bloye keystones at Steelhouse Lane Police Station (with nothing to report, other than “lovely keystones”) and stood still in Birmingham Cathedral grounds for around an hour.

I once stood there for 20 mins as an experiment, while thinking how to kill some time before an appointment. I was thinking which café or pub to go to then decided not to go anywhere, just continue to stand. I’d never done that before, and generally nobody does stand still for any length of time, unless they’re smoking or waiting for a bus. At the end of the ‘stand’ that time, my friend Brian passed by chance, looking disturbed. ‘What was wrong?’ Well, nothing: I actually enjoyed the experience and wanted to repeat it. One year on, I went back to spend 80 mins or so standing while the post-work crowds filtered past. What seems very simple (and possibly even a bit daft) actually turned out to have a lot going on. In brief, I came to feel that these were all people coming into my space, for a short time, and I felt very comfortable being there. I don’t think I’ve every looked at so many different faces at relatively close range in such a short time – that alone made the experience worthwhile, though its hard to say why exactly. I wondered if I would see someone I knew again – I did after 30 mins: Jerome from Birmingham International Film Society on his way to the final screening of the Chile 40 Years On festival… but too far to say hello to. I recognised someone who walked close to me but couldn’t remember why I knew her. For the entire duration, I would see a few puzzled micro-expressions, a few caught eyes but in this particular space no direct involvement from passers-by.

Towards the end something intriguing happened. Not everyone there was walking; there are many public benches in that space. Beyond the walkers, I became sensitive to who was resting, who was waiting and who really was doing nothing. There was a moment of high drama when a slightly melancholic elderly gentleman, who I thought was doing nothing, turned out to be waiting. He was met after 35 mins by a granddaughter with hugs, a bouquet of flowers and a stack of chemistry textbooks. Instantly my understanding of the situation was thwarted. Only I witnessed that short story, and now you know it happened too.

In the picture below, two people resting or waiting make it clear to each other that they want to have their own private space on the bench. There was another woman behind me who was resting or waiting too. After 45 minutes of being in that the space, the woman behind me and the man on the left in the picture stood and left together, gently and in silence. So why sit separately? After being so closely involved in the ‘story’, this was such an unexpected twist in the narrative I let out a cry of surprise. I suppose the point is, I would never have seen that moment had I not been watching that part of the city for an hour.

The final observation I made was that the whole experience had a very calming effect on me, though again not sure yet exactly why. While standing, I was peripherally chalking up a ‘to do’ list once I reached Urban Coffee but left the space feeling rested and ready to tackle it rather than anxious and overwhelmed.

The experience made me anticipate two Still Walking events. The first is happening tomorrow (Thursday 19 Sep) which is Francis Lowe’s ‘Free Seeing’ in Digbeth Which I introduced here:

The first Free See in Birmingham will take place in Digbeth on Thursday 19th of September. Participants should meet at 3.00pm outside the Fusion Centre of South and City College, High street Deritend, Digbeth, B5 6DY. Please come, this is open anyone with a keen eye, or those who want one.

The other event I anticipated today was David Helbich’s Drag and Drop. I took part in this in Brussels earlier in the year. In a previous blog I remark how many walking artists have their own take on the Silent Tour and David’s is perhaps the most ambitious I’ve yet encountered. David is also a composer and the principle of Drag and Drop is to create a tightly choreographed walking score around the streets of Birmingham. For you, that means joining one of two group leaders and following (in silence) until a point where you will be deposited to await collection by the next group of walkers. It’s an experience of extremes, from shared group movement to temporary individual contemplation and back again – but be assured that you will always be safe and in control of your environment. The whole thing will be devised, scored and rehearsed within two days and the location of the event will be announced by email the day before the event – but will be within striking distance of the city centre. At this point, that’s all I can tell you, other than you won’t often have the opportunity to experience a walk like this in Birmingham – which is largely the point of the Still Walking festival. Also, it is free!

Freeseeing and Night Photowalk: Two Events in the Fringe Festival

I first heard about Free Seeing through its originator: Mr Andy Spackman,[edit: oops, it seems Francis Lowe is the originator :s] a lecturer in Graphics at Coventry University. The concept was simple: think of ‘free running’ (aka Parkour) and replace ‘running’ with ‘seeing’. A clever move I thought, and rather easier than free running… but possibly less common. Francis Lowe invites and explains:

I created Free Seeing in response to the concept of ‘the found object’. Why not take it one step further and ‘find spaces’? We rarely take time to stop and really record what we see, so Free Seeing invites viewers to stop, look and really see.

Free Seeing is an audience-led initiative that allows audiences to find beauty, mood and pattern in the most unexpected and often ordinary of places. A Free Seeing event involves visiting sites in and around the country and encouraging audiences to find time to appreciate the visual value of spaces and places that have hitherto gone unnoticed.

Free Seeing is for everyone and can be experienced in any way. An audience member may choose to take a camera, a note-pad, a chair or even a picnic. Free Seeing lasts as little or as long as the audience want it to.

The first Free See in Birmingham will take place in Digbeth on Thursday 19th of September. Participants should meet at 3.00pm outside the Fusion Centre of South and City College, High street Deritend, Digbeth, B5 6DY.

We will take a fresh look at some of the hidden gems that exist within the nooks, crannies and man made environments of the area.

Bring a chair… some food… a flask… Whatever you want!

And on Wednesday: the Night Photo School Workshop with Pete Ashton

How do you take photographs when there isn’t much light? How do you deal with small bright streetlamps against a dark sky? What are the best settings for a long exposure? How can you build a light painting using movements of the city?

This workshop starts with a brief introduction to shooting at night, with and without a tripod, before spending 3 hours on the streets of Birmingham. Tripods are highly recommended though not essential.

This workshop was last run in December. Photos taken by participants are on the blog here.

We meet at the Symphony Hall Cafe Bar at 7.30pm then head out into the twilight from 8.00. The Cafe Bar is on your left as you enter the ICC from Centenary Square.

You can book here

This event is part of the Still Walking Festival Fringe. Thanks to THSH for letting us use the Cafe Bar for the class.

Let me know if you are hosting a walking event happening during the festival and I’ll promote them here. There a lot of walking going on in the city!

Still Walking is Go!

Announcing the launch of the third Still Walking festival! Ten new guided walks around Birmingham over the next ten days (mostly around the weekends) with various investigations / blogging / promoting other people’s walking events / generally wandering around in the week days between. Please do let us know if you got something interesting happening involving walking in your part of Birmingham, or even further afield.

Check the full programme though be warned that events are selling fast!

We’re calling the midweek events and activities the Still Walking Fringe: this is really just highlighting the events that are happening anyway. It seems people walk for all sorts of different reasons but it can be quite difficult to find out what’s happening where. For this outing of the festival, we’ll be going out of our way to find out what’s happening in Birmingham – the city people are calling “the City of Walking” ;O)

We’ll be blogging more about the Fringe over the next few days but some highlights are Pete Ashton’s Practical Psychogeography Workshop on Mon 16 September starting at 4 30pm – 9pm and Roland Kedge’s Glacial Boulder walk on Saturday 14th September (tomorrow!). For that walk, you need only turn up at the Great Stone Inn, Church Road, Northfield at 2pm. Roland will guide this three mile tour over approx 2 hours and round up the various glacial deposits that made their way from Wales during the last ice age. Free!

The festival proper kicks off this evening with Words on Buildings led by Birmingham Architecture Festival’s Laira Piccinato. The walk sold out some time ago but I’m going to see if she’ll lead another before it gets too wintery. Add yourself to the mailing list to be the first to find out: but in the meantime plenty of other tours are running. They’re all £4 and one is free.

But before then I’m going on a short walk to gear up for the events: a simple exercise to visit the nearest street to my home that I haven’t been to before. For me, that’s the mysterious sounding Pentos Drive near the river Cole. I’ll be joined by the noted Brummie nocturnal explorer Karen Strunks. Why do it? There’s probably nothing there but I think it’s good to expand your zone a bit occasionally.

A final note: launching a festival on Friday the Thirteenth may seem to be inviting trouble but luckily all the guides are paid up members of the Lucky Two Shoes League of Foot Freedom.

See you on the walks!

Ben Waddington

Festival Director