During The School of Pedestrian Culture’s residency with Art Walk Projects, the School has become an expanded walking forum featuring contributions from artists Iman Tajik and Johanna Koen with facilitation by Lucas Priest. Drawing from the writings and research of Elena Biserna we collectively meandered through coastal sites of change and dereliction, exploring walking scores as tools for awareness in both a literal and politicised 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!