walk together node

WALC Nodes – Extending the Commons of Walking Arts

In the Walking Arts and Local Communities (WALC) project, Nodes are our way of reaching further. They are collectives, organisations, and venues that bring the spirit of WALC into their own communities, linking local voices to the Prespa Encounters while extending the dialogue across Europe and beyond.

Nodes organise walks, workshops, artistic actions, and online exchanges that resonate with the themes of WALC— collective imagination, ecology, community and resilience. They embody our principle of decentralisation: strengthening fragile or overlooked contexts while connecting them to a wider international commons of walking arts.

This year, we are proud to welcome four inspiring Nodes:

  • ReRouting (Germany): exploring walking as curatorial practice and urban-critical intervention.
  • Walking as Practice at BKN (Sweden): nurturing peer-learning in the Björkö archipelago through sound, walking, and dialogue.
  • Creative Media for Social Change (Netherlands): developing participatory video and walk-along methods to amplify community voices.
  • Collettivo Amigdala (Italy): reimagining peripheries through feminist, site-specific performance.

Our constellation grows further with Australian Walking Artists as an affiliate partner, bridging continents.

Together, these Nodes and partners ensure WALC remains polyphonic, vibrant, and rooted in bo

WALC Nodes – Extending the Commons of Walking Arts

In the Walking Arts and Local Communities (WALC) project, Nodes are our way of reaching further. They are collectives, organisations, and venues that bring the spirit of WALC into their own communities, linking local voices to the Prespa Encounters while extending the dialogue across Europe and beyond.

Nodes organise walks, workshops, artistic actions, and online exchanges that resonate with the themes of WALC— collective imagination, ecology, community and resilience. They embody our principle of decentralisation: strengthening fragile or overlooked contexts while connecting them to a wider international commons of walking arts.

This year, we are proud to welcome four inspiring Nodes:

  • ReRouting (Germany): exploring walking as curatorial practice and urban-critical intervention.
  • Walking as Practice at BKN (Sweden): nurturing peer-learning in the Björkö archipelago through sound, walking, and dialogue.
  • Creative Media for Social Change (Netherlands): developing participatory video and walk-along methods to amplify community voices.
  • Collettivo Amigdala (Italy): reimagining peripheries through feminist, site-specific performance.

Our constellation grows further with Australian Walking Artists as an affiliate partner, bridging continents.

Together, these Nodes and partners ensure WALC remains polyphonic, vibrant, and rooted in both local realities and global conversations.

th local realities and global conversations.

The partners of WALC are Visual March to Prespes, University of Western Macedonia (Leader, Πανεπιστήμιο Δυτικής Μακεδονίας, UOWM, Greece), walk · listen · create (WLC, Belgium), WalkLab2.PT at the University of Minho (UMINHO, Universidade do Minho, Portugal), Contemporary Art Center Nau Côclea (Centre de Creació Contemporània Nau Côclea, Catalonia, Spain), Association Temps Réel (Gigacircus, France), Action Synergy SA (AS, Greece), School of Gaasbeek (De School van Gaasbeek, SvG, Belgium). Artistic co-ordinators of the WALC project are Geert Vermeire (WLC) and Yannis Ziogas (UOWM).
WAP & BKN SELECTED AS A WALKING NODE 

NODES are international collectives, organizations, or venues that organize walking arts activities related to community-based issues during and connected to the Prespa encounters in their own locations and joining the larger WALC network.
 
The primary goal of the WALC project is to create an International Center for Artistic Research and Practice in Walking Art. This center will feature a central hub in Prespa, Greece, complemented by regional hubs established in the project partners’ areas. The NODES complement the initiative aims to expand through external collaborations by developing activities and dialogues in other European countries, facilitated via this open call
 
Mutual inspiration and support within a larger framework of what is becoming an International Center for Artistic Research and  Practice of Walking Art in Prespa is the main objective, along with contributing to the development of Local Communities Innovation, standing for progress, change, and transformation with walking art practices related to community-based issues, especially in areas that are in crisis, underdeveloped, and isolated.
 
The combined effort of the WALC partners and the nodes will explore models of implementing walking as a community-based practice, contributing to the creation of sustainable communities and through dialogue with precarious groups worldwide.


 
 
 
WAC POSTER 25

The International Prespa Walking Arts Encounters 2025 (WAC 25) will be titled Walking Home / Walking in Transition. We invite artists, writers and other creative practitioners, critics, and researchers to gather in Prespa, Greece in summer 2025 (Monday, June 30 to Sunday, July 6). Anyone wishing to participate as an attendee is also welcome.

The International Prespa Walking Encounters 2025 (WAC 25) is an event in the frame of the Creative Europe co-funded project Walking Arts & Local Communities (WALC), starting in January 2024 for four years. Initiated by seven partners from five countries, WALC establishes a larger International Center for Artistic Research and Practice of Walking Arts, in Prespa, Greece, at the border with Albania and North Macedonia, backed up by an online counterpart in the format of a digital platform for walking arts.

The Prespa area, a unique environment with two lakes (Megali Prespa and Mikri Prespa), is the locuswhere the field research of the walking art project Visual March to Prespa is taking place, organized by the 1st Painting Workshop of the School of Visual Arts of the University of Western Macedonia. It was initiated in 2007 and the current International Encounters/Conference is a continuation of three International Encounters/Conferences (WAC) in 2019, 2021, and 2023, during which over 600 participants from all over the world met in Prespa. Since 2024 WAC has been part of the WALC program.

 

Next: The International Prespa Walking Arts Encounters  2027