The Walking Assembly

In May 2026, I had the pleasure of co-curating the Walking Assembly along the River Muga in Catalonia together with Clara Garí, Geert Vermeire, Pau Catà and Luce Choules.

The Walking Assembly is an international gathering of artists, researchers, walkers and thinkers who come together to explore how walking can become a way of learning from landscapes, communities and one another. In 2026, our focus was the Muga Valley, following the river from the eastern Pyrenees to the Mediterranean. For me it was about taking inspiration from Patrick Geddes' idea of the Valley Section as a way of understanding the relationships between people, place and work.

In preparation for the Assembly, my partner, geologist Nick May, and I spent a week walking the Muga Valley ourselves, exploring its landscapes, villages, histories and ecologies. This field research became the basis for our contribution to the Assembly. Here is a film about the current state of the River Muga valley created by The Pioneers of our Time.

Read more: Walking the Muga Valley Section

During the Assembly, Nick and I led one of the four walkshops, Personal and Other Pilgrimages, bringing together walking, geology, embroidery and collective fieldwork. Participants created individual embroidered "Personal Pilgrimages", collected materials and observations from the valley, and contributed to a shared textile that continues to evolve beyond the event. Read more: Stitching Personal and other Pilgrimages together at the Walking Assembly‍

The Assembly opened in Girona, where I was honoured to chairanthropologist Tim Ingold's keynote lecture, The Valley and the Stream. Drawing on Patrick Geddes' Valley Section, the lecture provided an inspiring starting point for the days that followed, framing the Assembly as an exploration of rivers, landscapes and the many ways in which knowledge emerges through walking.

Co-curating the Walking Assembly was an opportunity to bring together many strands of my own practice: transformational fieldwork, walking as artistic research, hospitality, textile-making, and long-term conversations about how we inhabit and care for places. It was a privilege to work alongside an inspiring team of co-curators and participants from all over the world, each bringing their own experiences, questions and ways of paying attention to the Muga Valley.

Many thanks to https://naucoclea.com/ for hosting the event with so many wonderful arts walkers. It was an honour to meet them all in this magic surrounding of the Muga River. For more information about the Walking Assembly and its programme, visit: https://www.artdelcaminar.org/.