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30 Days to Edinburgh

30 Days to Edinburgh was a practice-as-research project that explored walking as a vehicle in which to question and challenge the established creative methodologies employed by Bootworks Theatre Company (Daniels, Artistic Director) in order to develop new methods for our practice. The project engaged with theories and practices of Psychogeography, notions of ‘The Flaneur’, (Benjamin), Tramping, and walking as durational (art) practice and as such was informed by the work of Sophie Calle, Hsieh, Long, Phil Smith, Simon Persighetti, and performance company Wrights and Sites. The project was process-oriented and findings articulated in practice and writing:

1. A durational experiment in devising (involving a 30 day journey, walking approximately five hundred miles from Chichester to Edinburgh)

2. A performance and accompanying installation at Summerhall and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (2012)- the culmination of material made during the walking

3. Two evaluative publications:

• Baker, Daniels & Roberts (2012) ‘30 Days to Edinburgh’, in Field et al (2012) Forest Fringe: Paper Stages, Jerwood Charitable Foundation: UK.

• Baker, Daniels & Roberts (2012) ‘A Spaceman, Cowboy and Disco Dancer walk into

a Bar’,Total Theatre Magazine, Volume 24, Issue 2 (Summer 2012), University of

Winchester Press: UK (pp. 6-9).

Through this practice and its associated dissemination through performance and written exposition the walk-as-research became, in a sense, a ‘performance laboratory’ and, from a practitioner-perspective provided an opportunity to learn new ways of experiencing and developing devising strategies. To some extent the project contributes to developing practice-led discourses in walking practice but more particularly presents a specific example of a practical exploration of durational action that questions how this type of work might upset and limit more common-place collaborative and devising strategies.