The walking studio: The art of wayfaring

This article considers walking as a wellness intention, a creative act and a form
of community navigation within lived environments. The walking studio situ-
ates a walk as a form of art-making – mapping lines of travel using photogra-
phy, spoken word list poetry and field recordings. Walking as reflective inquiry
also accompanies movement through civic life and what is encountered en route.
The author proposes that walking can express active citizenship, agency and
the moving subject within their everyday worlds, thereby engaging the social,
environmental and political within the act of walking. The walking studio, as
a portable art form, has the potential to access new routes of life by travers-
ing unfamiliar territories which extend people into new situations and path-
ways. This article will also describe attributes of CHOICE (Challenging Health
Outcomes/Integrating Care Environments) an arts and humanities research
project situated at Ulster University (Northern Ireland) tackling mental health
disparity.