Walking Reading Group on Participation

The Walking Reading Group on Participation is a series of 4 walks offering the chance to discuss issues surrounding participation, engagement, collaboration and social practice whilst exploring the streets of London.

For each session texts are set in advance and form the backbone of the exchange. We depart from a venue and walk for up to two hours, swapping conversation partners and discussion themes. Apart from the texts, personal experiences, projects related to the area and the route through the city will inform the conversations.

Rebecca Beinart, Kit Caless, Faiza Shaheen and Ken Worpole were invited to devise this edition with us, and we will explore questions of participation through the lens of architecture, economics, fiction and ecology. The four invited guests have worked with us to select texts and determine the walk’s trajectory, and will offer a brief perspective on the reading material before we set off.

Wed 7th May (6-9pm) devised with Ken Worpole
Meeting point: Open School East
The Rose Lipman Building, 43 De Beauvoir Rd, London N1 5SQ

Wed 14th May (6-9pm) devised with Faiza Shaheen
Meeting point: Iniva
1 Rivington Pl, London EC2A 3BA

Wed 21st May (6-9pm) devised with Kit Caless
The Nunnery & Carmelite Café, Bow Arts
181 Bow Road, London E3 2SJ

Wed 28th May (6-9pm) devised with Rebecca Beinart
Meeting point: Whitechapel Gallery
77-82 Whitechapel High St, London E1 7QX

All events last for 3 hours (approximately 2 hours walk)

BOOK YOUR PLACE

Book by emailing: walkingreadinggroup@gmail.com
We strongly encourage you commit to more than one walk if possible.

All walks are FREE of charge.

In association with Bow Arts, Iniva, Open School East and Whitechapel Gallery. Facilitated by Lydia Ashman, Ania Bas and Simone Mair

About the participants:

Rebecca Beinart is an artist and educator based in Nottingham. She completed an MA in Arts and Ecology at Dartington School of Art in 2008. Her projects explore the territories between art, ecology and politics and take the form of live events, installations and interventions in public places.

Kit Caless is the co-director and editor at Influx Press, a small publishing house specialising in site-specific fiction. He also hosts the literarture show, Mapping the Metropolis on Resonance 104.4FM.
influxpress.com

Faiza Shaheen is a Senior Researcher leading work on inequality and labour markets at the New Economics Foundation (NEF). As well as conducting research on the topic, she co-ordinates NEF’s research and campaigns work on economic inequality.

Ken Worpole is a writer and social historian who has lived in Hackney for more than forty years. He is the author of many books on social policy, landscape and architecture and was a member of the UK government’s Urban Green Spaces Task Force, and adviser to the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE).

Funded by Arts Council England.