(Dis)enchanted Walking - Sweet Waters: Extended Phase, a selection of files documenting the exhibitions/installation at Saltford Brass Mill and Corsham Court, and online engagements.

Two public walking arts projects, Honouring Esther and Sweet Waters, developing a critical walking arts and media practice bringing past injustices into present consciousness generating contemporary social justice resonances.The live work offers an iteration of walking-with (Sundberg 2014) as a non-confrontational approach attending to obscured and reluctant heritage (Tomory 1997).

This item contains documentation of the following:

SWEET WATERS 2016-17: sense-ing legacies of slave-ownership in Bath and along the River Avon

Aims to develop an iteration of walking-with method as a non-confrontational approach attending to obscured and ‘reluctant heritage’ (Tomory 1997), extending techniques of spatial/temporal layering and folding as dissonant stimuli, generating social justice resonances.

Images from the 'Soundings' installation at Saltford Brass Mill Oct 2017 and subsequent exhibition at Corsham Court. online presence. The item documents digital media, projections, and a performance prose response to the co-created social media trail. An installation of artefacts, walkers' notebooks and other documentation. Sweet Waters:Soundings took place during Heritage Open Week 2017 and was attended by walkers who took part in the project, as well as other supporters and visitors, during Heritage Open Week. The brass mill was a significant location in the cycle of walks; in C18th and C19th the mill, along with others along the River Avon, produced and processed brass goods including items of wearable wealth, manillas, a form of currency for the purchase of captured and enslaved people in West Africa. Waste from the brass manufacturing process was cast into building material, the 'memory stones' referred to by walkers. Social media trails were generated through the aggregation of walkers postings to a single trail using the Viewranger app and the Social Hiking platform. The blue icons represent social media postings this is demonstrated in performance prose piece, a live recorded response interacting with the combi-map trail.

Project Outline: Developed over an 18 month period involving over 50 walkers and many hundreds online, Sweet Waters was part of Richard White’s ongoing investigation of walking arts as social justice intervention, developing tactics for articulating and materialising corporeal experience and affective resonance. The project resonates with UNESCO World Heritage programmes, specifically attending to legacies of slave-ownership. The project was commissioned for Bath Festival Fringe, funded by Arts Council England with support from Bath Spa University, Festival of Nature and Fringe Arts Bath. An installation at a heritage site followed as part of Museums Week and Journey to Justice Bristol. Participation was extended using social media with trails generated live and aggregated. Referencing body fluids and the memory of water folded in an understanding of the water cycle, the project generates insights and observations on volatile and porous bodies (Longhurst 2001), the power of things and memory making practices (Micieli-Voutsinas 2016; Bennett 2010).

website/blog: http://www.walknowtracks.co.uk/sweet-waters.html

Aggregated Social media trail via Social Hiking

http://www.shareyouradventure.com/map/73087/walknowlive/Sweet-Waters-June17

Vimeo folder: https://vimeo.com/album/5488933