Walk

Distance: 12 miles

In collaboration with the InspiralLondon collective.  Starting from Benfleet Station and up the tidal creek north of Canvey Island, we pass across marsh, landfill and railway – a low-lying landscape created and shaped by water – now undergoing seemingly irreversible change with the building of London Gateway Port.

The walk will include short interventions and talks from the invited associate artists, and other guests including Jane Trowell (Platform) and artist Ben Coode-Adams – creator of the Fobbing Arch.

We will be joined by local artists, community group, Hydracity and inspiralLondon Associate Artists. Stopping at locations along the way, to discuss aspects of this manmade environment overlaid the marshy Thames Delta.

Something is oozing up from beneath our feet, join the adventure!

Walk Info

• Duration: approx: 6 hours + picnic
• Start: 10am (this might change to 9am)
• Finish: 5pm (this might change to 4pm)
• Distance: 15 miles across some uneven territory.

Dress accordingly and bring a packed lunch. There is a halfway stop at Pitsea.

This walk is a collaborative walking art project as part of Hydracity 2021. This project brings artists and the public together to investigate London’s watery network, the interlocking ideas & currents that flow in/out the Thames. It focuses on collective co-creation through on the ground mapping, ecology, the environment and placemaking; creating a network of alternative histories for our watery commons that invite audiences to collaborate in re-imagining the city as a fluid ecosystem, by exploring: other narratives for places, people, landscape within Thames Valley; novel ways to experience together and understand the city’s waterways; complex ecosystems of cohabiting; our own body as watery ecosystem within wider watery commons – in the merging of solidity and fluidity; water as a regenerative resource for shifting times.