Slow and Steady On October 7th 2025 at 7pm UK time, I’m pleased to be sharing an online event with Marie-Anne Lerjen at the Walk Listen Create Café where we will be talking about the Marsato Award we received for our work. The recording can be found here on the walklistencreate youtube channel.
Walking the Granton Boundary on Vimeo
I’ve been repairing my sound walk, No Birds Land, in the Trinity Tunnel of the Edinburgh cycle paths.
Tomorrow morning there’s a community walk along the Trinity Path where it’s situated and I’m going to say a bit about how I made it and why, play it to them, encourage participants to Stop and Listen to the Birds, and put the installation into the context of the tunnel, the old railway, and the history of the area.
It’s a wet and mucky job as the rain comes in and runs down the walls, bringing with it all sorts of minerals and deposits in a wonderful array of subtle and extreme colours. The there are the mosses and lichen, spiders and flies, and lots of tiny feathers embedded there too.
As well as the pleasure of working in this environment and discovering the little messages and additions folk leave or add, it’s the interaction with the walkers, runners and cyclists I enjoy.
The first man stopped running and asked about what I was doing. He shared his experiences of going from light to darkness, activated the QR code, and thanked me.
Another woman kept running but called she called out, “That looks lovely!”
I offered a card to a couple of guys sheltering under umbrellas, who said “Yes please”. Then one said he’d already listened on a previous occasion and smiled.
Keith – he told me his name: – stopped and used the QR code (his son had told him about the ones along the Water of Leith). He asked me if it was the same sort of thing and I explained. “Nice to meet you”, he said, asking my name, and walked off, listening, so that my recorded Sound Poem rang out in the #trinitytunnel
A huge white, wet, fluffy dog barked and barked. I like to think he was v enthusiastic about No Birds Land as a work of public and activist art!
If you’d like to join us, here are the details: Join the Drylaw Neighbourhood Monday Morning Walking Group and me for a tour on 28th July of the Trinity Path. You will learn about and listen to the No Birds Land soundwalk (funded by RSPB and Sustrans, shortlisted for a Sound Walk September Award) and Trinity area local history.
@sustrans @rspb.scotland #trinitytunnel #nobirdsland #soundwalkseptember @walklistencreate #activistart #environmentalart #makeadifference @drylawnc
Either meet at Drylaw Neighbourhood Centre (DNC) at 10am (free return bus) or at the path entrance on Trinity Rd near the junction with Lower Granton Road. What3Words ///since.page.tells at 10.45am.
Ends approx. 12.15 at Trinity / back at DNC by 1pm.
Bring a pack lunch and drink if you like, plus something to sit on and keep you dry in the event of showers.
To book (for free):
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/trinity-path-tour-tickets-1513927310339?aff=oddtdtcreator
On May 5th 2025, I joined Tom Jeffreys (organiser) Tiki Muir and Emily Cropton on the final day of a walk to raise awareness and funds for Palestinian families. Fundraising link
I made a flag to carry on the day.
It features a quote from the artist, Jumana Emil Abboud (b. 1971, Shefa’amer) who is Palestinian. Her practice is grounded in her homeland’s cultural landscape and she draws on the traditions of folklore, myth-making and storytelling that once animated community life, particularly around times of family or community gathering, such as seed-sowing, water collection, or harvest. In her work, she uses drawing, installation, video and performance, often collaboratively, Exploring personal and collective memory and practices of sharing and re-telling as ways to address experiences of loss and longing, she highlighs the impacts of decades of dispossession and annexation. (adapted from the Campleline website where her work was shown in 2023.)
I seek out the presence of a woman; or perhaps it is she who seeks me out … I attempt to express her intimate voice. To copy the embroidered smile (or frown) of her soul; her womanhood.
Jumana Emil Abboud, from the catalogue to Story Time: an exhibition by artists living in Israel / Palestine. Institute of International Visual Arts, London: Arts Council England. Sherbany, Anna (1998).
The shape of Gaza was transposed onto Edinburgh and Midlothian and a solidarity walk was planned around its outline. In total, 23 people walked at one stage or another. This was the second event, the first being in the Scottish Borders and the north of England in 2024. Then, £4000 was raised, and this time it is over £6000. Tom writes:
In placing one map on top of the other, the first thing you notice is how tiny Gaza is. 25 miles of coastline; a population of over 2 million people; bombed for nearly two years, with barely a pause for breath, and no possibility to hide or escape.
Tom Jeffreys (instagram @tom_jeffreys)
We walked and shared stories, poetry readings and more, remembering and celebrating artists and writers from Palestine (Mira Mattar, Hasib Hourani) who express what is happening on the ground, as well as in hearts, there. The event was moving and it was important to be doing it together, both for mutual support and to emphasise the impact.
Wheatley Elm Wellbeing Walk, May 10th 2025 (2-3.30pm).
A free community event beginning at Granton Crescent Park with some walking, art activities and gentle exercises. Part of the country-wide Urban Tree Festival, it focuses on our local trees, ones we go past everyday, and celebrates how brilliant they are.
Booking Link: https://urbantreefestival.org/wheatley-elm-well-being-walk
Meet here: There is a bench just inside the gate at the top of the path which runs between Granton Crescent and the bottom of Granton View and we will gather there. What3Words: ///skips.bets.aspect
We will visit some of the resilient and versatile Wheatley Elms in Edinburgh, find out more about this unusual species which is only found in 2 places in Britain, Edinburgh being one of them, and identify how we can benefit our sense of wellbeing besides.
Walking, well-being ‘exercises’, art, talking and learning about the Wheatley Elm trees in the city.
All welcome – adults, children and dogs, prams and wheelchairs. Bring water and wear sensible footwear. Chocolate provided.
Contact me if you have questions. tamsinlgrainger@gmail.com
Connected links:
Chepstow and the Forest of Dean were at the beginning of my walk along the Gloucestershire Way (see below), the British Pilgrimage Trust’s Tewkesbury Abbey to Gloucester Cathedral, and the Slow Ways UK route from Gloucester to Cheltenham. The whole project was a political, ecological and artistic walk ‘for the small things-often unseen or unnnoticed-to celebrate their importance in our ecosystem’. The theme grew out of my research for the Line(s) of Enquiry Walking the Land group exhibition which was at the Hardwick Gallery, University of Gloucestershire in Cheltenham between 3 and 27 March, and from the actual stitching of tiny insects. (This blog , Walking with Ants, explains what I did.)
Three Ordnance Survey map app screenshots of the maps I used for the walk: The Gloucestershire Way (GPX from the Long Distance Walking Association), the British Pilgrimage Trust’s Tewkesbury Abbey to Gloucester Cathedral, and the Slow Ways UK route from Gloucester to Cheltenham
I am fascinated with borders, the shared edges of places. Though they are a line on a map, they are also complex political divisions. Chepstow, or Cas-gwent, being on the Welsh side of the English border, shares the languages of Welsh and English and is at the cross-over point between cultures. I knew it a little, in my early twenties, when I lived and worked in the Forest of Dean as a Dance Animateur (someone who animates people about dance in a specific geographical area). It seemed right, somehow, to start my walk on the Old Bridge very shortly after sunrise, at the meeting of night and day. Long walks are always significant for me, they mark the boundary of the way I was and of a new way to be.
Captions for the images above: Some of the small things that I met on day 1, that make up and contribute to our ecosystem: Dog’s Mercury / Bingelurt or Mercuralis perennis (highly poisonous) found on ancient woodland floors; White spots on Lords and Ladies / Cuckoo pint or Aurum maculatum, perhaps indicating minerals in the water. It is also poisonous; Deer droppings that will feed the soil when it rains.
Before I left Edinburgh for Gloucestershire in England on 6 March 2025, I had felt under increasing pressure to produce intelligent ideas and write about what I intended to do. I felt sure it was not enough to ‘go on a walk and look at the landscape through the eyes of an artist’. I was worrying myself over not being sufficiently learnèd because I haven’t been to Art School or done a PhD, as so many of my erudite friends and colleagues have. I wonder, now, whether that worrying had something to do with what happened on the walk, with the injury I sustained which took a long time to get over and which still causes me pain at times.
… that the brain’s left hemisphere is designed to help us apprehend and thus manipulate the world, and the right hemisphere to comprehend it, to see it all for what it is.
Dr Iain McGilchrist from The Matter with Things (intro)
My different interests have always engaged me with both sides of my brain. At dance college we were being trained to become ‘thinking dancers’, effectively doing 2 degrees in one by mastering the practical application and delving deeply into the academic subjects which underpinned it.
Shiatsu, which I started to learn in 1989, is a hands-on subject. I was taught and have practised for many years, how to touch the body effectively and appropriately; it was essential that I deepened my intuition about the Chinese / Japanese notions of chi and qi. However, we also studied the theoretical and philosophical aspects of this complex complementary therapy.
Now I’m making walking art: simple perambulation in its application, plus reflection and enquiry coming duraing and after. With this latter, though, I was constantly worried about my ability and whether I should be doing something more in-depth and sophisticated.
Captions for the images above: Going up May Hill, Forest of Dean March 2025, and the view from the top
I’d looked at the map for the second day, seen that there was a steep hill at its end, and told myself I did not have to do that, what with the heavy rucksack and it being only the end of day 2 (traditionally, one of the most challenging when doing a long-distance hike as you are not used to the hours of exercise, haven’t yet built up the relevant muscles to cope with it). When I got to Longhope though, I felt good. It was such a beautiful evening that I broke my resolve and went up anyway. Almost immediately, I had to stop every 11 paces, to rest and breathe, and then my foot slipped from under me and the weight on my back toppled me over. I was, as I had intuited the night before, too tired. It did not feel not serious, but by the time I started going down, I was hobbling. The back of my left knee was already hurting a lot.
The result of straining a tendon was that I had to focus in minute detail on my body sensations and how the surrounding landscape effected them. I could not use my brain to figure intellectual things out or puzzle over the meaning of what I was doing. I had to sink into my physical system to find ways to mitigate the damage and minimise any further harm to my soft tissues. This meant watching the ground, not only for the small things which often reside there, but for any slight undulation. Equally mindful of the internal as well as external beings I was meeting, I was forced into a different sort of balance.
Captions for the images above: fugi growing on a log, Harlequin ladybird, cotyledons growing on a molehill
Just before I left home, by chance, I came across the drama deries, The Change (Channel 4) by Bridget Christie. It’s about a woman who leaves home and goes to the Forest of Dean ‘to find herself’. I could hardly believe the syncronicity. After my return, nursing my poor leg and unable to walk far at all, I watched series 2. It is full of shots of the small things: a beetle slowly crawling, mushrooms sticking out of a log, and seedlings starting to sprout. It is suggested that the more Linda, the main character, starts to feel rooted, and things start to drop into place for her, the more she starts to hear what is going on in the landscape around her; even the mycelium growing and connecting underground.
These early days of the walk were idications of how the whole was going to be: fascinating in the detail, a deep learning and balancing experience, and muddy, so very muddy.
To be continued/
Walking without a donkey 