Leeds 1845

Leeds improvement act, 1845, section showing the free market extension, Vicar's Croft/Kirkgate, on Google Earth. The Corn Exchange is in 3d in the background.

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radical walking and the problem of the flaneur

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On Friday 17 February, I gave the opening talk at the Radical Walking conference, part of the Radical Voices season at Senate House Library.



The audience were a good mix of academics, postgraduates and activists, including people from the Loiterers Resistance Movement group of Manchester and Croydon Modernist Society.

The speakers included the inspiring David Rosenberg of East End Walks , Michael Eades of the Bloomsbury in a Box project, and Blake Morris, discussing the Walking Library for Women project. These were the most activist and 'applied' projects of radical walking.

I and Rosenberg in particular spoke about why walking - using the eyes of history to examine the traces and parallels in the past - is an activist practice, and one connected directly with politically activist histories. Morris picked up on this also, observing how when on a walk of suffragette London, his group tried to find monuments to any women en route and failed to find any.

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