During LUCAS PRIEST’S residency with Art Walk Projects’ ‘Climate Cafe’ the School will become an expanded walking forum featuring contributions from artists Iman Tajik and Johanna Koen. Drawing from the writings and research of Elena Biserna we will collectively meander through coastal sites of change and dereliction, exploring walking scores as tools for awareness in both a literal and politicized sense.

Through walking routes, discussions and psychogeographic games, we have been investigating the sociocultural, ecological and economic implications of water systems in Edinburgh’s coastal cityscape. Our research has no empirical results; only the passing conversations held between participants, and the experiences gained by actually doing the scores.

The School of Pedestrian Culture is a pseudo-institution for the ‘play testing’ of psychogeographic games aimed at disorienting how we encounter space and place across Scotland’s central belt. The School has a particular focus on exploring, encountering and drifting through sites of change, community resilience and capitalist expansion. 

The School emerged from the sense of a lack of a collective pedagogy at the Edinburgh College of Art following the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally existing as the ‘Diversionists’, the group later became known as the School of Pedestrian Culture, a fictional department at ECA. Now part walking forum, part art collective, part art school, the SoPC interweaves walking and talking with local politics, community resilience, friendships and art!

This project forms the first part of Art Walk Projects’ newly formed ‘Climate Cafe’; a series of walking events that provide informal, inclusive spaces for everyone to join in conversation and get involved, that connect with climate action locally and further afield. 

Supported by funding from The National Lottery Awards for All & Creative Scotland, the ‘Climate Cafe’ will involve a series of events working with artists and ecologists from May-Dec 2023

Images from public walk during Art Walk Porty 2023 Vessel programme and accompanying exhibition at Art Walk Hub. Images: Ellie J McMaster

LIST OF WORKS

May to Sept 2023 A series of monthly artist-led walks around Portobello
September during Art Walk Porty:
VESSEL Group Exhibition, Art Walk Hub Portobello
Scored Group Walk, with public participants

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