They’re our way of saying, “thank you” to Little France Park, whilst also encouraging others to take a walk in the park and enjoy what it has to offer. Rather, these postcards invite you to encounter Little France Park, to “Look at it / Listen to it / Taste it” wherever you may be, and to share your response by sending someone a postcard.Īlternatively, these postcards can be kept as a book to be ‘read’ at leisure or ‘exhibited’ as a postcard gallery – propped up on a shelf or blue-tacked to a wall. And the postcards themselves offer no ‘conclusion’ to the walk. Not everyone who walked is represented in these postcards. It also fostered a growing sense of community, which continues to this day.Ĭoncluding Line Walk Mindful Drawing after twelve months sparked some interesting conversations: should we carry on walking each month? What do we owe the park for the gift of a year’s walk? Do we want to share our experience with others, and if so how? The answer to this final question is partly answered through the publication of these postcards.*** Conceived as an ‘open book’ – a book without a spine – these postcards draw from our collective experience.
The use of Facebook created a visible presence for Line Walk Mindful Drawing beyond the participants themselves.
YEAR WALK AND SUBJECT UPDATE
While under no obligation to share one’s response to Line Walk Mindful Drawing, participants were invited to update a Facebook page with comments and ‘drawings’ if they wished to. Beginning with 8 participants in January, peaking at 10 participants in May and finishing with 4 participants in December.** One unexpected outcome of the event was the migration of walks abroad, when three regular participants left Edinburgh and continued to update a group Facebook page with walks undertaken in Heidelberg, Germany and Pontevedra, Spain. Participation for the event fluctuated – due, in part, to COVID-19 restrictions. Indeed, this was the primary invitation: to spend two hours a month for the duration of a year observing the changing seasons within oneself and Little France Park and to do this consciously, as part of a subject-group.* Walking between 10am-12 noon on the first Saturday of each month gave a regularity to Line Walk Mindful Drawing and encouraged engagement throughout the year. The intention was to pay greater attention to the ecological moment: observing a reed bunting as it pecked seed from a bulrush plucking two blackberries from a tangled, thorny stem, eating one and using the other to draw with etc.
YEAR WALK AND SUBJECT FREE
In response to this call for a drawing, participants were free to respond in whatever way they chose: by drawing in a sketch book, taking a photograph, writing a haiku etc. 1.5 hours) during which they walked slowly – more or less mindfully – through Little France Park, Craigmillar, Edinburgh.Īt self-selecting moments, participants could call for a ‘drawing’ with the following words: “Look at it / Listen to it / Taste it / This will be a X minute drawing” (when X designated a timeframe between 30 seconds to 5 minutes). Participants were asked to observe a sustained period of silence (approx. Line Walk Mindful Drawing – a year in the Life of Little France Park was a scripted, but open-ended, two-hour walk on the first Saturday of every month for the duration of a year. To contact Jonathan directly please email. 2022 will also see work on a new audio trail working with Craigmillar Now, and a bookwork published to document the Line Walk Mindful Drawing project.įor more information about Jonathan’s residency see below.
CRAIGMILLAR & COMMUNITIES WALKING RESIDENCYĪrtist+curator Jonathan Baxter has been working with communities in Craigmillar & surrounding areas to explore a range of approaches that embed an ecological way of thinking about Craigmillar’s past, present and future through walking, planting and the sharing of conversation.Īfter a year spent in Craigmillar 'talking whilst walking' and walking in companionable silence with his Line Walk Mindful Drawing project, 2022 sees the start of a collaboration with Edinburgh & Lothians Greenspace Trust to plant Craigmillar's first Wee Forest.
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