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OPENING MONDAY 21 SEPTEMBER – A CALLOUT FOR:

Walking Futures / Living Country
Walking Art Exchange

Three Days of Walking, Making, Thinking, and Gathering
convened by Australian Walking Artists

Friday 16 to Sunday 18 April 2027
Abbotsleigh, 1666 Pacific Highway Wahroonga NSW 2076 Sydney Australia 

Call for Walkshops and Presentations

Walking is never simply movement between places. It is a creative practice, a method of inquiry, a political act, a form of care, and a way of sensing the world differently. Moreover, issues of access, ownership and the fencing of lands hang over walking in Settler Cultures. Indigenous knowledges, hidden histories and walking against the mainstream all provide alternative routes across territories. We question where we walk, why we walk and with whom we walk. New futures can be created via walking. In a process of ‘worlding’ we look towards creating, shaping, and inhabiting worlds together with others through walking — where landscapes are alive and relationships are brought to the fore — in a time of social, political and ecological crises. 

At the Walking Art Exchange, participants will dive deeply into walking practice beginning with a choice of three in-depth ‘walking ground’ group walking experiences, followed by walkshops and symposium presentations. We invite artists, researchers, curators, educators, writers, activists, and community practitioners to contribute to the diverse practices and possibilities of walking art. Bringing together people working across disciplines, the gathering will explore how walking can generate new ways of creating, knowing, remembering, and imagining. Through walks, conversations, and presentations, the exchange seeks to foster dialogue around walking as both artistic practice and critical method.

The Exchange will occur in conjunction with Reverberant Earth: New Walking Works, an exhibition presented by Australian Walking Artists at the Grace Cossington Smith Gallery. To respond to the callout for Reverberant Earth, please visit this webpage.

Topics

We welcome proposals that engage with walking in expanded, experimental, and interdisciplinary ways. Topics may include (but are not limited to):

  • Walking as artistic practice

  • Indigenous knowledges, sovereignty and walking with Country

  • Walking and the art and science of ecology

  • Fences and boundaries: rights of access and impediments to walking Country

  • future listening through walking

  • Walking practice and processes of internal decolonisation

  • Walking as creating and shaping local and global futures

  • Slow practices and embodied attention

  • Walking with the more-than-human

  • Translating alternative critical world views into walking practice

  • Psychogeography and urban exploration

  • Pilgrimage

  • Solo walking as non-heroic

  • Solvitur ambulando in the contemporary world

  • Walking and public space

  • Walking as social practice: participatory and community-engaged walking

  • Walking, memory, and storytelling to revisit places

  • Migration, mobility, and displacement

  • Walking, disability, and accessible movement in the streets

  • Walking differences: feminist, queer and neurodiverse practices

  • Walking archives and mapping to unravel colonialism

  • Environmental justice and climate futures on foot

  • When does walking as co-creation work, and what are its limits?

  • Walking in experimental methods and interdisciplinary research

Formats

We invite proposals in two formats:

Walkshops

Walkshops combine walking with workshop, performance, conversation, or participatory artistic practice in motion. Rather than presenting ideas solely indoors, we invite proposals that think through movement, place, and shared experience. Walkshops may include creative exercises, listening practices, sensory investigations, mapping, collective making, storytelling, field observation, performance, or experimental pedagogies.

Length: between 60 and 120 minutes

Audience Size: approximately 15–20 participants.

Locations: in and around Grace Cossington-Smith Gallery (Abottsleigh) with optional venues available at The Rocks, Sydney CBD, coastal walks or Kuringai Chase National Park.

Short Presentations

30 minutes e.g. 20-minute sessions followed by 10-minute discussion.

Presentations may include artist talks, performative lectures, case studies of walking projects, scholarly papers, creative research, collaborative projects, other sit-down hands-on activities or works-in-progress.

Who should apply?

We encourage proposals from:

  • Artists and artist-researchers

  • Architects and designers

  • Sound practitioners

  • Writers

  • Foragers

  • Curators

  • Academics and independent scholars

  • Educators

  • Environmental practitioners

  • Activists and community organisers

  • Graduate students

  • Walking groups in all forms

  • Cross-disciplinary collaborators

We particularly welcome contributions from First Nations practitioners and researchers, emerging voices, and those whose work expands conventional understandings of walking.

Submission Guidelines

Please submit:

  • Title of activity

  • Abstract, let us know what, where and why (up to 300 words)

  • Short biography (100 words)

  • Preferred format (Walkshop or Presentation)

  • Technical or accessibility requirements (if applicable)

  • Your website and social media links

Key dates for the Exchange

Call opens: 21 September 2026

Submission deadline: 1 December 2026

Notification of acceptance: 18 January 2027

Exchange dates: Friday 16 to Sunday 18 April 2027