Loitering With Intent: The Art & Politics of Walking

The exhibition, Loitering With Intent: The Art & Politics of Walking, explores how walking can be a work of art or a political act. Walking is often taken for granted as an everyday activity but it has extraordinary resonance. Footsteps create desire lines and shared histories; creative walking can become performance art that helps re-imagine, remap and reshape the world. Protest marches, mass trespasses and quiet acts of pedestrian rebellion reclaim space and assert rights. The exhibition illustrates how the fight for the right to roam in the city, to take up space, is more vital than ever. Privatisation and enclosure of common land has an impact on everyone, restricting where we go and how we act. Over the last few years Nick has spent many, many hours exploring Greater Manchester at night. During this time he has experimented with numerous methods for mapmaking and documenting his experiences. His contribution to the exhibition includes: texts, maps, sketches and photographs. This project is part of a wider, ongoing body of work that Nick has produced in relation to his interests in walking as a cultural practice, the politics of space and the right to the city. The exhibition is being held at the People's History Museum in Manchester, the national museum of democracy.