“Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness.”
The early 19th-century existentialist philosopher Søren Kierkegaard turned the act of walking into more than a pragmatic movement from A to B. He regarded the physical activity as a tool to gain inner calmness. As long as you continued to walk, everything would be alright. His statement is a plea to keep moving forward in life and deal with heavy thoughts and challenges head on.
This Spring, Summer and Autumn, Create London turns its attention to how walking can ignite creativity, social awareness, wellbeing and community connections. Through a series of walks in Dagenham with various artists, participants are invited to join in, experiencing how walking does not only make you wiser, as advocated by Kierkegaard, but also more creative!
Kierkegaard’s quote is part of a larger philosophy about living life in motion and is still relevant as a life-affirming perspective about finding solutions through actions. From philosophical thought-processes to health benefits, from the social aspect to meditative healing, walking offers benefits for body and mind, both as a collective endeavour and in isolation.
Since then, artists have explored the notion of walking as performance, sculpture, practice, and research in both urban and rural environments. Through the land art of the 1960s—Richard Long’s A Line Made By Walking (1967)—and the performance art of the 1980s—Mona Hatoum’s Roadworks (1985), Marina Abramović and Ulay’s The Lovers: The Great Wall Walk (1988)—artists have interrogated landscapes, intimate relationships and institutional oppression by the simple and radical act of walking. Ingrid Pollard’s photographic work Pastoral Interlude (1988) and Wordsworth’s Heritage (1992) explored Black British experiences of walking in the countryside, challenging notions of history and heritage in rural England.
Recently, there has been a resurgence of walking as an art practice used by artists and researchers to explore collective creativity. British artist Jade de Montserrat integrates walking with performance, drawing and film to engage with rural communities and address intersections of race, class and colonial history. Canadian nonvisual artist Carmen Papalia explores ‘creative wayfinding’, the use of alternative modes of navigation without visual cues, challenging cultural ableism. Closer to home, Create London organised two walks with Flock Together in 2023, in and around nature reserves in Barking Riverside, to reclaim natural areas for people of colour.
Dagenham, where most of the Becontree Estate is situated, is dominated by cars. This was not always the case. When the estate was built just over 100 years ago to accommodate 26,000 homes, few had the means to own a car. Since then, the lack of public transport links compared to West London and the increase in private car ownership has turned many of the lush and generous front gardens into private parking spaces. Create’s aim with this series is to reclaim the act of walking in favour of moving by car. We will be exploring Dagenham trees, weeds, sounds, objects, architecture and ornaments. We will investigate how ways of looking can alter one’s knowledge, understanding and reading of an area, the way one feels at home or detached from a neighborhood. Anyone welcome to join — Dagenham resident or not!
The Art of Walking programme:
Our pilot walk with David Bennett explored the quiet, enduring presence of council-owned street trees across the Becontree Estate. These trees are silent witnesses to the estate’s 100-year history: from generations of residents to social, political and urban change.
The Travelling Drawing Club–20 June 2026
Our second creative walk, Domestic Thresholds and Suburban Roots will be led by The Travelling Drawing Club. This walk will explore the edges of public and private, examining the small markers that define home. This session interrogates suburban care and asks how domestic architecture shapes community, identity and a sense of place.
Keep an eye on our Instagram as we announced more artists to join our walk.