current community workshops - UofM class workshops will incorporate some of these elements

An opportunity for personal and neighborhood reflection, by exploring the paths and routes we take in our daily lives through a local walk. It is a means to reflect on the personal stories, on the mundane and intimate moments and exchanges on these paths and within this area that have shaped and continue to shape our feelings and responses to where we live.

This workshop is inspired by the concept that changing our patterns and movement habits can change our attitudes and perceptions of ourselves and others, that taking a different path might change our perspective on our neighborhood by:

• challenging our assumptions and preconceptions about our place and roles within a community

• encouraging participation in neighborhood renewal and regeneration

• getting us to look at our physical surroundings with a view to transformation and change if we wish it

• facilitating communication within groups and gaining some understanding of one another’s different paths, both literal and metaphorical

• recognizing and acknowledging where and how our paths meet.

Session 1: Walking and Mapping

A workshop that uses old and new technologies (such as pencils and GPS) to enable participants to observe and create personal maps of the places they walk and visit on a regular basis. Working in small groups, students document their walks through writing, drawing, photography and stories to create annotated personal geographies of a particular neighborhood or space.

Session 2: Navigating and Storytelling

Participants exchange one another’s maps and use them to navigate their neighborhoods/campuses with fresh eyes and the shared narratives of others.

Walking has long a been a tool for making art, in addition to providing inspiration and source material. We look at a number of artists who have used walking in their own practice. Students will be encouraged to reflect on the possibilities for re-defining the nature and practice of their own art-making, and to consider how walking might be used in their work to re-look at ways of perceiving and listening, difference and diversity.

(This workshop can be structured as a single lecture/discussion or a practice-based series.)

• fees:
• standard fee is $750 per workshop
• for classes participating in the cross-disciplinary collaboration and end of term event, we will do three workshops for $1500 (which provides an opportunity for shared expenses)