PS Walks

Mel Anie

PS Walks is an ongoing series of interlinked and co-created walks. From October 2023 - February 2024, it has included 18 walkers and 18 prompt-makers across 17 countries, 6 continents, 2 hemispheres and multiple time zones. It has become a form of international chain-linked poetry in motion.

Walking is an activity that serves many purposes. It’s a mode of transport, leisure and an often unrecognised tool for thinking. In 2019, I walked with Blake Morris on a silent surveillance walk in London, where I was introduced to the idea of walking both as creative practice and form of a social connection, as distinct from it being a means to any other end.

Four years on, at the end of Summer 2023, I met up with some international artists who I’d been collaborating with by mail for a few years. This was the first time we’d met, but we all enjoyed walking. Cathryn Miller, an artist from Canada, gave me six spun silk scarves that she had knitted in response to a previous (non-walking) project we’d been doing. She said I should do with the scarves as I wished. Around this time, Noriko Suzuki-Bosco sent me a postcard from Japan––it featured a walking thinker.

All of these things happened at the same time, and, as an after thought, I proposed PS Walks to a group of six creative people. I hoped that the walking would encompass any of the above mentioned purposes. Most of these people enjoyed walking but were not ‘walking artists’. They lived far away from me across six political/geographical boundaries. All of us were open to various forms of distance-collaboration. I envisaged it as a fun, creative activity that we could do together in our own time and space, and without the delays, costs and uncertainty of the postal services.

Because the walk idea was an afterthought, I called it PS Walks. Because most of us had been connected by the post, the walking prompts would be Postcard Size. And, to make it collaborative and fun, each prompt would be linked to the previous one by taking an element from the previous week’s prompt. The walks would be weekly and could be walked anywhere, anyhow, anytime from Wednesday-Tuesday. Some of the prompts included “Secret Passages” and “Name Something Pink”.

Since this was experimental and time dependent, I thought we’d go for one walk and then that would probably be that. How wrong I was! Even those who were reticent at first––who thought they could only manage one of six walks––quickly wanted to do as many as they could. Each week we shared our experiences (mostly conveyed through photographs) that we’d gathered on our walks from various parts of the world. It was easygoing and relaxed fun––yet also quite intimate.

The project was always a low key one with ground roots integrity. For the first 18 walks it was by invitation only. It was carried out on Instagram in private chats with the option for people to share as publicly as they liked. Most, including me, did not. Because of this, and the nature of the linked prompts, PS Walks quickly became a co-created, world-wide walking chain. Over time more people were invited to join, some of whom continued to walk alongside others. While some people interpreted the walks similarly, there were lots of different perspectives too. And taking part and doing the walks meant different things to people.

It provided an opportunity for all of us to observe international weather, geographical and landscape changes over a specific period of time. I chose to walk on Wednesdays every week, whatever the weather and whatever my daily schedule (of course the weather affected the type and quality of my walk). Noriko Suzuki-Bosco (Japan) walked all 18 walks and reflected on our individual and group geographical experience:

Over the last 18 weeks, we walked through glorious sunshine, rain, wind, mist, and snow. We experienced - together and at a distance - unbearable heat as well as freezing temperatures. The prompts encouraged and invited us to pay attention to our surroundings whilst walking and to use a little imagination to see the familiar in a different light. I am not an avid fan of Instagram, but for this project it provided a way to share the various walks conducted by the participants spread across the world every week. It made me realise that the blue sky we looked up at was also blue in other places and that the river we followed ended up in the same sea.

Deidre Matthee (Romania) found that the walks have been simultaneously transporting (following the elsewheres of the other artists' footsteps) and rooting (connecting me in new ways to the place where I am). There was a surprising flow and ease to the artwork we created. All of this carried me through the grey dark of January to other seasons and a different winter.

There was also a lot of fun. Noriko recollects that ‘we entered secret gardens, got caught in rose thorns, encountered aliens, followed animal footprints in snow and wandered around with a mirror under our chins.’ Winsome Brown (New Zealand) recalls that ‘We collected what others in their headlong rush had left behind; we searched for treasure by moonlight; we played I Spy, and we drifted with or without intent  - and sometimes both.’

PS Walks developed a heart that pulsed with international co-operation, collaboration and co-creation; a relational practice with a strong sense of human connection. As a facilitator, prompt-maker and walker, PS Walks put a smile on my face so many times for all those 18 weeks. Knowing that someone else, somewhere else was walking a similar walk at a similar time was a very comforting experience.

For PS.18 we invited everyone to become ‘adrift’. For Noriko this encouraged her ‘to keep walking the walk and to follow where the road or the river or the sky or something pink may take me.’

Since 14 Feb 2023 (PS.19), new prompts are available to the public on Instagram hosted by @pswalkbeside.

The PS Walking Chain of Promptmakers

1.     Mel Anie – Cumbria, UK

2.     Cathryn Miller – Canada

3.     Noriko Suzuki-Bosco – Japan

4.     Martine Rastello – France

5.     Annie Lord – Scotland

6.     Christin Wijnen – Belgium

7.     Di Metcalf – South Africa

8.     Fabiola D’Antuono – Italy

9.     Ana Kawajiri – Brazil

10.  Maya Matthew – India

11.  Mathilda Guerin – Germany

12.  Blake Morris – USA

13.  Melanie Mowinski – USA

14.  May Barker – Australia

15.  Winsome Brown – New Zealand

16.  Elisenda Mallol-Comas – Spain

17.  Wendi Bakker – Norway

18.  Deidre Matthee - Romania