Walking Assembly

DYNAMIC KNOWLEDGE
International confluence and expedition format. 9-13 May 2026
EU Interreg POCTEFA HO1 grant (2026-2027)

LUCE CHOULES – Walking Assembly 2026

Walking Assembly – ‘moving together in practice’

“Walking Assembly is a nomadic, field-based gathering for artists, researchers, educators, and collectives interested in walking as a form of knowledge-making, relational practice, and ecological inquiry. Building on the Walking Arts and Relational Geographies encounters held in Catalonia in 2022 and 2024, the 2026 edition marks a decisive shift: from conference to assembly, from encounter to movement. Rather than relying on conventional academic formats, Walking Assembly proposes an experimental model in which knowledge emerges through shared walking, presence, and collective experience. Learning is understood not as something transmitted or taught, but as something that arises through movement, attention, and being together in place.”

2026 confluence and expedition core team: Clara Garí (Spain), Geert Vermeire (Belgium), Luce Choules (France), Claudia Zeiske (UK) and Pau Cata (Spain). The framework for this project started in 2024, and was developed between 2025 and 2026.

LUCE CHOULES – Walking Assembly 2026

PROGRAMME

9 May
The Walking Assembly opens with a one-day confluence in Salt near Girona, hosted by the Ateneu Popular de Salt, the Associació Milfulles, and the Department of Geography at the University of Girona. Moving beyond traditional conference formats, participants engage on site through talks, conversations, walks, programmed workshops and collective fieldwork sessions, rather than formal paper presentations. Highlights include a public conversation with Tim Ingold [in English] The Valley and the Stream, followed by Q&A. Afternoon parallel activities: Luce Choules and Edwina fitzPatrick present the experimental fieldwork session Co-produced geographies and counter cartographies; and Milfulles Association present a thematic walkshop Water Footprints: from the Ter to the Monar canal in the Hortes de Salt as part of their Re-design project. Evening event is by Festival l’Inevitable through a participatory performance Objectographies.

10-13 May
Following the confluence, a selected group of participants will take part in a nomadic walking expedition along the Muga River in Albanyà. Working in small groups during the day, participants engage in sustained dialogue with the river and its landscapes through four themed walkshops on location, and a remote fieldwork activity. Each day combines walking sessions and field-based practices, followed by collective evening gatherings at the basecamp in Albanyà to share experiences, questions and insights.

Themed walkshops:
The river that sees us: under the gaze of the Muga – Clara Garí and Marc Caellas
Walking, Writing, and the Commons of Attention – Geert Vermeire and Fred Adam
Personal and Other Pilgrimages – Claudia Zeiske and Nick May
Walking on Water – Pau Cata and Patricia Healy McMeans