Walking pedagogies is a series of audio dialogues exploring pedagogy through conversation and walking. The project brings UAL staff and practitioners together to curate and lead meaningful walks rooted in specific locations to share personal context and history. Drawing on walking ethnographic practice and psychogeography, these recordings become unique records of what it is to be a teacher in this moment in time. They take us out of the university to encounter in wider environmental and political contexts and issues.
Walking pedagogies proposes a methodology that is intentionally embodied. It allows two people to engage in a dialogue, in motion; and to respond to each other and their environment in a fluid, dynamic and spontaneous way. It brings the city, the politics of space, the historical, the personal and the emotional into play. If Psychogeography is “the study of the specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organised or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals” then walking pedagogies embraces this whilst folding what is relevant to our pedagogies into the mix.
The resulting recordings are unique records of pedagogic practice at UAL in this moment that acknowledge wider environmental contexts and issues. The aim is that they lead us to more potent, personal and authentic insights into the dynamics of our practice, and what forms us as teachers. These recordings aim to embody and mirror the decolonial practices that we work by, by embracing chance, flattening hierarchy, centring the body and physically moving out into the communities that UAL exists within.
“To engage in dialogue is one of the simplest ways we can begin as teachers, scholars, and critical thinkers to cross boundaries, to challenge one another, and to change the world.” (bel hooks)
Walk 1:
Soho, Saville Row and China Town: Dr Manrutt Wongkaew walks with Carole Morrison
Walk 2:
Brixton and Windrush Square: Rahul Patel and Dr Gurnam Singh
(coming soon)
Walk 3:
Southall and the anti-racist youth movement: Dr Gurnam Singh and Rahul Patel
(coming soon)
This project has been developed by Gemma Riggs who works in UAL’s Academic Enhancement team in the Teaching, Learning and Employability exchange. For more information and to propose a walking dialogue, please email g.riggs at arts.ac.uk