Spoken Walking-Drawings: A Workshop on Weaving Visual Voices into Dialogic Artifacts

In this paper we present a workshop we conducted to facilitate the exploration of sensorial space and sensual reflections, in which the creative modalities of drawing and speaking become co-constitutive of each other and of the process of relating intimately with the environment. This workshop aims to enhance spatial awareness by combining walking and a map drawing method that explores the memory of the immediate embodied experience, and stimulates an inter-personal spoken interpretation of the drawn silent intimate maps.

While the act of drawing a map works as an introspection tool for exploring multiple narratives of an existing site, or of an imaginary project, the map can also grow into a platform for communicating spoken insights from, during and after walking a route. Although often attributed to artists, architects or designers, immediate mapping or re-construction of an experienced route is a journey that can be made by anyone to develop their spatial-environmental relationships. Mindful movement through various landscapes can cultivate and enhance spatial sensitivity, and the immediate map drawing that follow can foster a creative remembering of these landscapes within and through our bodies. The mini-exhibition presented in this paper through words, drawings, photographs and videos reflects on the variations of collaborative “spoken” wayfaring-drawings crafted between the workshop facilitators and the participants, unfolding as visual and audial answers to individual narrative construction of meaningful routes.