What can we learn from walking a watercourse? Between April and August 2023, artist and curator Jonathan Baxter as part of his Craigmillar & Communities Residency led four group walks in collaboration with poet Helen Boden, visual artist Sarah Gittins and haiku writer James Spence.

The walks took a group of participants from mouth to the source along three adjoining burns: Figgate, Braid and Bonaly. Participants were invited to respond to the watercourse through writing, drawing and conversation. This publication includes a selection of such responses involving a number of the participants.

Contents:

Reflections on the Braid Walk Watercourse – Jonathan Baxter and Sarah Gittins
Braid poetry – Helen Boden
Braid writings – Sandy Bennett-Haber, Tamsin Grainger, David Gee, Ewan Davidson and Jonathan Baxter
Haiku / Voices / Drawings – James Spence, Glen Cousquer, Graham Robinson, Olga Bloeman, Pam Ager, Kirsty Jenkins and Sarah Gittins
Braid Walk Listening Score – Linda O’Keeffe and Sarah Gittins
Edited by Jonathan Baxter

Braid Walk (2023) was commissioned by Art Walk Projects and funded by Creative Scotland and Paths for All.

First edition of 100. Published by Art Walk Press Edinburgh UK.
Design and concept: Rosy Naylor, Maddie Lennon and Jonathan Baxter.
Printing DTP Southfield Musselburgh
ISBN: 978-1-7399400-8-9

The post Braid Walk appeared first on Art Walk Projects.

Artists: Henna Asikainen, Jonathan Baxter, Huniti Goldox, Tonya McMullan, Murray Morrant, Jenny Pope, Lucas Priest, Vira Putri, Claudia Zeiske.

Writers: Isabel Perez-Ramos, Alycia Pirmohamed, Maria Sledmere (commissioned in partnership with MAP Magazine).

With introductory essays from project curator, Rosy Naylor and editor, Tom Jeffreys.

The post Art Walk Journal 2: Vessel appeared first on Art Walk Projects.

The work features contemporary reenactments of a water clock – a time-keeping technique from ancient times that relies on the fall and flow of water through a vessel. It critically engages with colonial perspectives and scale, examining how territorial control is exerted through human-made structures like time zones, dammed rivers, and aridity lines. It provokes reflection on scientific and indigenous forms of knowledge, as well as the fates of unmeasurable objects, subjects and relations within the natural world.

For the exhibition for the Vessel program at mote102 (20-27 September) the viewers are invited into an immersive video installation including a video of a digitally constructed water clock model and a video manual which takes the viewer along diverse landscapes. By immersing viewers in a narrative woven by the intertwined entities of water, stones, trees, and birds, the work offers a shift towards an elastic territory that transcends the traditional boundaries of time. Through it HUNITI GOLDOX seeks to contemplate diverse methods of world-building that prioritize the interconnectedness of elemental forces, in contrast to the industrialized and accumulative doctrines that have prevailed.

HUNITI GOLDOX (Areej Huniti & Eliza Goldox) is an artist collective whose work is shaped by contextual examinations of geopolitical realities, marginalised oral histories and mythologies. They started their engagement with mutant narratives through contextual research on a buried water stream in the centre of Amman, Jordan which then extended to the swamp lands and coast of Tunis, Tunisia, an artificial lake in Leipzig, Germany, urban development projects around Tirana River, Albania and the Vistula River in Poland.

Their work has been exhibited and screened across Jordan at Darat Al Funun, The MMAG Foundation, The Jordan National Gallery and Goethe Institute in Amman as well as at SomoS Art House, Berlin, D21, Leipzig, Sheffield Film Festival, TBA21-Academy, Venice, Tirana Art Lab, Albania, Manifesta 14 in Kosovo and Hauser & Wirth Menorca.

Images: Sally Jubb Photography 

LIST OF WORKS

September 2023 during Art Walk Porty Extended:
VESSEL Group Exhibition, mote102 Ferry Rd Leith (immersive video installation)

The post Measuring Time through the Fall of Water appeared first on Art Walk Projects.

Through collective casting workshops on the beach in Portobello to produce transient vessels, and mixed media investigations, Murray explores the dynamic interplay between architecture, human nature, and ever-changing landscapes.

Murray Morrant Based in Glasgow, Murray’s work is influenced by his interest in architecture and the built environment. Through a narrative-based approach, his work often takes an anthropological approach, exploring the human desire to shape and reshape landscapes into territories over time. The idea of environments being in constant flux is a common theme throughout his creative practice.

Murray studied architecture at the Glasgow School of Art, graduating in 2021. His work, ‘Against Aseptic Corporeality,’ which reimagines a gallery for wastewater, has been exhibited in the Desired Spaces Exhibition (2020) and featured in Koozarch magazine. Murray has since worked for architecture studios in Denmark, London, and Glasgow.

Above images from Sand Making Vessel Workshop and Pop Up Exhibition, Portobello Beach (September 2023)

The workshop involved making objects in the style of sandcastles,
encouraging learning and creative thinking through play. A lightweight
cubicle on the beach created a pop-up exhibition; the four walls of the cubicle providing the walls to display polaroid camera images of the made vessels which were later taken by the rising tide.

Murray provided a selection of forms to be used in the same way a bucket is used for making sandcastles. Participants mixed and matched these forms to experiment and create their own sandcastle-like sculptures, taking the shape of pipework, toilets, and drains. These are elements that are usually invisible and reserved for individual use, but here, they will be put on display and made by a collective group of people.

Accompanying works as part of Vessel group exhibition, Art Walk Hub (September 2023)

Toilet 1 2023 using materials collected from the Figgate Burn Portobello
Booklet including map of Portobello sewer, surface water and water pipes & supported texts

LIST OF WORKS & EVENTS

September 2023 during Art Walk Porty:
VESSEL Group Exhibition, Art Walk Hub Portobello High Street
Sand making VESSEL workshop, Portobello Beach

The post Stool to Stool appeared first on Art Walk Projects.

For Art Walk Porty, McMullan is collaborating with Restalrig-based community group, The Ripple Project, looking at methods of rainwater collection and community growing to create a scented water-collection sculpture. Made from discarded plastic and organic material, this work is informed by McMullan’s interest in interactions between humans and insects, as well as the unique scent and growth patterns of tomato plants.

Top image: Installation at mote102 (Art Walk Extended, September 2023)
Photo: Sally Jubb Photography

Images from Water Collection Device Workshop at Craigentinny Community Garden (Photos: Ellie J McMaster)

Tonya McMullan situates her work amidst communities using long-term engagement to make context-specific, process-based, participatory and performative installations that foreground ecological concerns. McMullan has immersed herself in the world of insects for several years: ongoing projects with beekeeping, urban agriculture and pollinators have developed into explorations of our sensory and extra-sensory connections.

Past projects include Crude Floral (2022), a series of scent explorations with Art Walk Projects; There is something in the æther (2021), a scent and hand sanitiser created for TULCA festival in Galway to encourage people to recollect smell memories and consider relationships with the environment past present and future; and The Lure of Tomorrow’s Harvests (2020), an installation commissioned by Talbot Rice Gallery comprising an archive of Edinburgh honey collected during lockdown.

Images from Water Collection Device Workshop with The Ripple Project (August 2023).

Bottom image: Guided tour to Seafield Water Treatment Plant (September 2023).
Photos: Tonya McMullan and Rosy Naylor

LIST OF WORKS

July-August 2023 Workshops with The Ripple Project, Craigentinny
September 2023 during Art Walk Porty:
VESSEL Group Exhibition, Art Walk Hub Portobello
VESSEL Group Exhibition, mote102 Ferry Rd Leith
Rainwater Collection Workshop, Craigentinny Community Garden
Seafield Water Treatment Plant Drawing Tour
Conversing with Tomatoes Event with wild foods forager Judith Lamb

The post Repel and attract appeared first on Art Walk Projects.

Walking from mouth to source along three adjoining burns: Figgate, Braid and Bonaly, these walks took their inspiration from the way of water – its flow and healing powers – and the poetry to be found in the name Braid Burn:

Burn (landform): 

Large stream or small river

Braid (transitive verb):

To make from braids
To form (three or more strands) into a braid
To mix and intermingle; to braid fact with fiction

Burn (intransitive verb):

To contain a fire
To produce or undergo discomfort or pain
To yearn ardently; burning to tell the storyThe story we’ll be telling, or rather, the story we’ll be walking, concerns our collective sense of what it means to live within a climate and ecological crisis, and how walking a watercourse might enable us to live that question now with rejuvenated purpose and joy.  

Questions we asked included the following: in a time of climate and ecological crisis what qualities, human and more-than-human, might we braid to ensure our planetary survival? What can we learn from walking this particular watercourse? Why walk from mouth to source: upstream and in search of something we may never find?

Over the course of four walks and two additional workshops we explored these questions, and more, through walking, drawing, poetry, and conversation. Integral to the project was the process of walking upstream into mystery, uncertainty and doubt; qualities we may need to cultivate if we wish to respond creatively to the climate and ecological crisis and the alternative futures it gives rise to. Participants were encouraged to bring their own resources to our collective endeavour: a singer brings their voice, a photographer their camera, an ecologist their know-how.

The walks were guided by our encounter with water, curated by Jonathan Baxter (artist-curator), with contributions from Helen Boden (writer and workshop leader), Sarah Gittins (visual artist and workshop leader), and James Spence (haiku poet).

During Art Walk Porty 2023 Vessel programme participants contributed through two exhibitions (Art Walk Hub and Porty Light Box) together with poetry and conversation inspired by walking the Braid Burn Watercourse, with readings by Helen Boden, James Spence, and other walkers. Themes explored subjects of climate change, ecology, flow, structure and hope.

In September 2025 A publication was produced published by Art Walk Press and launched at the 2025 Art Walk Porty Festival. Copies are now available for sale through this website.

Supported by project funding from Paths for All and National Lottery Awards for All.

The post Braid Walk appeared first on Art Walk Projects.

Christina Riley’s latest work brings this unseen activity to the surface, asking what life looks like to those who live underwater.

Her work compares the weighty, sharp and unwieldy gear of the scallop dredge with its chain mail “belly bag” to the delicate marine bodies underwater. Riley has engaged with local marine scientists and conservationists to create underwater photographs of affected locations. These images show not only the impacts of dredging but also the positive solutions being enacted by communities.

Christina Riley is an interdisciplinary artist based on the west coast of Scotland, who explores connections between art and science with a focus on the sea and inshore habitats. Living next to the water and infatuated by the endless unknowns of life on earth, Riley seeks underwater and multi-species perspectives as a means of exploring the idea that something does not need to be understood in order to be cared for, but it does need to be experienced, somehow. 

Drawn by an instinctive desire to hold, touch, collect, gather and share, her practice involves books and storytelling as well as natural and man-made objects. She is inspired by the power of the individual within a collective, the significance of the seemingly insignificant, and how the part becomes the whole. 

Photography: Sally Jubb

LIST OF WORKS

September 2023 during Art Walk Porty:
Installation, Portobello Beach and Pipe Street Toilets (outside walls)
Artist Talk by Christina Riley

The post Quota appeared first on Art Walk Projects.

Made from woven willow and bamboo and lined with clothing donated by local residents, the vessel evokes the possibility of navigating hope in uncertain times. The work encourages conversations around the climate emergency and Portobello’s complex connections with the sea. Following a series of workshops, in which participants can create a common ‘survival kit’, the project culminates with a watery celebration event, launching the vessel with a swim along the shore.

Top image: Coracle Launch (2023) – Photo: Jon Davey

Coracle Launch & Watery Event at Portobello Beach (September 2023)- Photos: Ellie J McMaster
Videography: Rachel McBrinn

Jenny Pope is a sculptor who creates collections of tools from discarded objects to explore psychological change. Her work layers together different components, each with their own past functions and applications, in order to create non-linear narratives and evoke the intangible ways in which we make decisions in response to change and uncertainty. In particular, her work explores anxieties around the climate crisis, questioning the possibilities of hope and perceptions of survival.

She trained at Edinburgh College of Art and exhibits widely in the UK. She has undertaken residencies with Art Walk Porty and commissions with Scottish Society of Artists (SSA). She is also on the council of the SSA, a member of Royal British Society of Sculptors, and is involved in mentoring and coaching artists.

Installation at mote102 (Art Walk Extended, September 2023)- Photo: Sally Jubb

LIST OF WORKS

August 2023 Survival Kit Workshops, Portobello
September 2023 during Art Walk Porty:
VESSEL Group Exhibition, Art Walk Hub Portobello
VESSEL Group Exhibition, mote102 Ferry Rd Leith
Coracle Launch and Watery Event, Portobello Beach

The post Buoyancy in unprecedented times appeared first on Art Walk Projects.

ENDLESS/BELLY suggests an excavation of Scotland’s role in shaping the Black Atlantic, while considering the experiences of being Black in Scotland in the past, present and future. The project sees the development of three new live art micro commissions by Edinburgh-based artists Tanatsei Gambura, Khadea Santi and Lisa Williams. 

Ruwona has also conceived a programme of six films by Black artists making work about water and is sharing new writing.

This programme forms Art Walk Porty’s first curatorial residency and is supported additionally by funding from City of Edinburgh’s Council Diversity & Inclusion Fund, and The William Syson Foundation. 

Natasha Thembiso Ruwona, Portobello Prom 2022 – Image: Ellie J McMaster

ABOUT EACH PROJECT:

Salt Wounds
Artist Khadea Santi presents Salt Wounds as both a remembering and healing work. The event incorporates salt mined from Lake Retba, Dakar, a peninsula in Senegal and the westernmost point of Africa. This salt holds histories of no return, the Transatlantic slave trade, colonisation and Black Ecologies. 

Simultaneously a performance, workshop and ceremony bringing together fire, ceramic, salt and writing, Salt Wound invites participants to use tinfoil to encase ceramic pieces in salt, then to unearth them from the ashes transformed into a myriad of different patterns and colours. The work also speaks on pyromancy (meaning divination by means of fire) and water as a place for cleansing and mourning.

Twisted Dream
Lisa Williams’ Twisted Dream is a poetic pilgrimage that prompts participants to take their minds back to Portobello in 1863. Enslavement in the Caribbean has ended 30 years previously, and Elizabeth Baillie McIntosh wakes from a feverish dream. The Scottish widow of a plantation owner in the tiny island of Carriacou, Elizabeth is now living a life of piety in Portobello. She becomes obsessed by the nightly visions of the cribo, a snake she had killed on the plantation, and begins to walk in her sleep. 

Drawing on personal family connections and wider historical entwinings, the poems explore our own capacity for self and collective healing. Williams invites participants to join in a poetic pilgrimage around Portobello together.

When We Come Out of the Water
Tanatsei Gambura’s When We Come Out of the Water bears witness to the fatal encounter of Black bodies with bodies of water in the wake of colonial and imperialist violence. From trans-Atlantic slavery routes to refugee migration channels on the Mediterranean, labour under modern capitalism continues to inter Black people within marine ecologies. 

Gambura is inviting people to bring fresh flowers to the steps of Portobello bandstand for a two-day vigil in honour of Black lives lost at sea. Constructed as an ‘organic memorial’ using funereal flora and the built structures on Portobello Promenade, this is an opportunity for communal grieving through the death practices indigenous to Black communities: ceremony and ritual. It acknowledges that Black and indigenous people will continue to be the worst affected by the climate emergency. 

When We Come Out of the Water Tanatsei Gambura, Joppa Steps 2022 – Image: Jon Davey

Commissioned Works & Live Art:

Exhibition
SALT Natasha Thembiso Ruwona, Art Walk Hub & Portobello Promenade 2022
Salt Works Natasha Thembiso Ruwona, mote102, 102 Ferry Road Edinburgh 2023

Live Art 2022
Twisted Dreams: a poetic pilgrimage
Lisa Williams, founder of the Edinburgh Caribbean Association, guides a performative walk through Portobello, exploring connections between Scotland and the Caribbean.

Salt Wounds
Khadea Santi leads a performance, workshop and ceremony bringing together fire, ceramic, salt and writing, including salt clay firing and durational performance on Portobello Beach.

When We Come Out of the Water
Tanatsei Gambura invites people to come together, bringing flesh flowers in honour of Black lives lost at sea, Steps by Joppa Bandstand.

Film programme
curated by Natasha Thembiso Ruwona: Tabita Rezaire, Akosua Adoma Owusu, Tulani Hlalo, Wanuri Kahiu, Zebib K. Abraham, Deborah Jack
Portobello Promenade, by Pipe Street

Writing commissioned in partnership with MAP Magazine, published in SALT journal published by Art Walk Press 2023:

A trio of texts by Harvey Dimond, unravels real and imagined oceanic journeys in South Africa, Scotland and Barbados:
I. Nobody Dies of Old Age in the Ocean on Tanatsei Gambura
II. Maps on Khadea Santi
III. Pray for a Life Without a Plot on Lisa Williams

Available to read on MAP

Twisted Dreams: a poetic pilgrimage Lisa Williams, Portobello 2022 – Image: Ellie J McMaster

About the artists:

Natasha Thembiso Ruwona is a Scottish- Zimbabwean artist, researcher, and creative programmer. They are interested in how Afrofuturism and ecology can meet through storytelling and by listening to the landscape. Using water as a site for thinking, Natasha investigates entwinements of Scottish history and Black Geographies via their transatlantic connections. Through their investigations, they are also seeking to understand how healing and improved wellbeing are impacted when we explore our relationships with our environment.

Tanatsei Gambura is a poet and artist who connects lived experience, geographies and memories to create multimedia works of exchange. Tanatsei’s commission considers water as a space of birth, life and death, and proposes communal grieving as a method for healing.

Through collaborative approaches to making, Khadea Santi uses workshops, clay, sound, performance and film within her practice. For her commission, Khadea continues to use elements of collaboration as a method for making through conversation, fire and clay.

Lisa Williams is the founder of the Edinburgh Caribbean Association where she runs educational, artistic and heritage projects. Lisa’s work for Art Walk Projects expands on her Black History Walking tours and research into Scotland’s relationship with the Caribbean, this time using contemporary art to tell these stories.

Salt Wounds Khadea Santi, Portobello Beach 2022 – Image: Natasha Thembiso Ruwona

The post ENDLESS/BELLY appeared first on Art Walk Projects.

Joanne Matthews (centre) with other SALT residency artists, Mahala Le May (left), Natasha Thembiso Ruwona (right)
Image: Ellie J McMaster

Commissioned Works:

Exhibition
Assorted Kipple Art Walk Hub 2022 and site of Old Joppa Saltpans (alongside performance/reading) – photographed below

at first, and then 15:00 video and sound installation, mote102 102 Ferry Road Edinburgh March 2023

Set in a speculative salty world, at first, and then is a collage of photographs, moving image and sound. Part of Matthews’ 2022 residency with Art Walk Projects, the film takes place in an over-salinated Portobello. Through a queer lens and with nods to 1960s French new wave cinema, the work layers a 35-voice choir with crawling digital sounds, harking to past science fictions projecting into the future. Production and editing assistance from Kathryn Cutler-Mackenzie.

Writing commissioned in partnership with MAP Magazine, published in SALT journal published by Art Walk Press 2023:

We Will All Be Marine Mammals Soon on Joanne Matthews by Rowan Lear – available to read on MAP

The post I looked out and saw plumes of salty air appeared first on Art Walk Projects.