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
A map of sound walks in Edinburgh EH5
This is a map showing the locations of three soundwalks in Edinburgh EH5 by Tamsin Grainger: ‘The Wall’ and ‘No Birds Land’ were both shortlisted for Sound Walk September awards (walklistencreate.org). Is There a Place for REVOlution or Peace and Biscuits was a 4WCoP23 event. Detailed information can be found on the links below, together with Soundcloud and Vimeo connections.
Whilst ‘No Birds Land’ and ‘Is There a Place for REVOlution or Peace and Biscuits’ have recently been renewed and mended with new pennants, I’m sorry to say that ‘The Wall’ installation has become ragged from the weather and time. You can still walk along the wall / Western Breakwater of Granton Harbour and listen to the Sound Walk on your phone, but you will need to access it either before you leave home or from here if you have sufficient data, as there is no QR code currently at the site. Links to ‘No Birds Land’ and ‘Is There a Place for REVOlution or Peace and Biscuits’ are below.
My sound walks are site-specific sound/art installations with QR codes for you to listen to on your phone as you are walking through the tunnels or along the wall on the Western Breakwater of Granton Harbour.
My Sound Walk has been short-listed by walklistencreate.com for a Sound Walk September Award 2022. I am delighted.
I’m sorry to say that this installation has become ragged from the weather and time. You can still walk the wall and listen to the Sound Walk on your phone, but you will need to access it either before you leave home or from here if you have sufficient data, as there is no QR code currently at the site.
Location: Western Breakwater, Granton Harbour. What3Words ///piles.cargo.whips Walk along Chestnut Street, turn left onto Hesperus Crossway. The very long wall is straight ahead of you (possibly through a gap in the temporary fence) across some wasteland.
Here is a pdf with information about this sound walk and art installation.
So I made a new film as a taster.
On Soundcloud
To listen to the whole thing:
Check out all the other shortlisted sound walks here from Wednesday 9th November 2022.
You may also be interested in James John Paul’s blog about Granton Harbour here https://wp.me/pdm7X0-YD
Autumn 2022
I have been involved in a project devised and documented by Kel Portman. A curator on this Walking the Land project, his initial invitation set off a chain of coincidences and connections to do with the passing of time and how we experience sound.
“As the equinox marks the cusp of seasonal changes with the beginning of Autumn in the North and Spring in the South, artists record their reflections on the transition, the changes of light and the passing of time.”
KP
Stretching Time was my contribution.
I walked in Edinburgh on consecutive days, photographing the sunset on the 22nd September, and the sunrise on the 23rd. As the earth’s axis comes perpendicular to the sun which crosses the equator from north to south, we, in the Northern Hemisphere, are traditionally celebrating harvest and know that we are moving into a darker and colder, more restful and reflective period. At this auspicious occasion, we pass through a time of near balance of 12 hours of daylight and 12 of night (equi-nox : equal-night).
I time-ordered my photos, made an equator-axis tip, and then overlaid the images. I had been reading about “light being stretched and becoming redder” in The Guardian (24/9/22), and inspired by the James Webb telescope photo of Saturn, used a bloody tint. On that day, I was on a train crossing from Scotland to England and added some words about my own feelings at this time.
Stretching Time
As the sun hits the equator
And the earth tilts an iota,
I marvel.
As the cells die in my body,
And the train hurls itself southwards,
I cry.
As the rain stops at the border,
And the year passes the baton,
I know I must change.
Link to the video. Thanks to Kel Portman.
Then in October I attended an opening at the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop where Alliyah Enyo‘s work, Selkie Reflections, is in the tower. It is an other-worldly soundscape, reminiscent of sea mammals’ song and Tibetan Tonqin Longhorn. She writes about whale sounds taking more time to travel through sea water, but being able to travel far longer distances, and she mentions stretching time:
This is much like the pathos experienced when listening to an audio recording of a person from years ago, as time is stretched and distended by a voice communicating from the past.
Alliyah Enyo
I had already been listening to David Haskell describing the way sea creatures hear with the whole body:
If I had a watery fish body, sound would penetrate through me. Aquatic beings are immersed in the sound that they’re in.
David George Haskell on Walk Listen Create
So, as I sat in the tower listening to Enyo’s installation, I imagined I was hearing through my watery, bodily fluids. My eyes were not shut, but I could see horizontal, parallel wavy lines between me and the walls, and there were layers of sound, not just of the composition itself, but of birds from the cycle path, voices from the bench beside me, and people speaking outside the tower.
Link to the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop
The more we engage with what we used to refer to as a separate, natural world, the more it is obvious that we are part of that world, that we all influence and have the opportunity to influence each other. Humans are limited in the world of sound, compared to birds (which I have written about before No Birds Land) and dolphins, for example, and I’d be interested to hear if you have tried listening in different ways and if so, how that was for you.
Walking without a donkey 