GoodGeist
A podcast on sustainability, hosted by Damla Özlüer and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network. Looking at sustainability issues, communications, and featuring global guests from a wide variety of sectors such as business, NGOs and government.
GoodGeist
The Feminist Art of Walking, with Morag Rose
What if a walk could change how a city works? We sit down with walking artist, activist, and academic Morag Rose to explore psychogeography as a living practice—one that uses curiosity, conversation, and gentle mischief to reclaim streets from noise, ads, and exclusion.
From dérives guided by pigeons and dice to community-led wanders across Manchester, Morag shows how moving side by side can dissolve hierarchies, surface hidden histories, and open a path toward more just, accessible and sustainable places.
We dig into the Loiterers Resistance Movement and its simple, radical premise: the streets belong to everyone Morag challenges the myth of the lone flâneur by centring collective walking and a feminist ethic of care. We talk accessibility and crip time, acknowledging that bodies move at different speeds and that true inclusion requires benches, toilets, lighting, and safe routes as standard, not extras.
Morag’s new book, The Feminist Art of Walking, and her monthly First Sunday invitations offer a blueprint for community-led exploration that turns urban design into a shared conversation. If you’ve ever wondered who public space is really for, this conversation hands you the map to redraw it together.
Follow GoodGeist for more episodes on sustainability, communications and how creativity can help make the world a better place.
Goodgeist a podcast series on sustainability hosted by Damla Eusler and Steve Connor. Brought to you by the DNS Network.
SPEAKER_02:Hello, hello everyone. You are listening to Good Guys, the message on sustainability, which is brought to you by the DNS Network, the global network of agencies dedicated to making the world a better place. This is Damlo from Mira Agency Istanbul and This is Steve from Creative Concern in Manchester.
SPEAKER_01:This podcast series explores global sustainability issues, how they're communicated, and what creativity can do to make positive change happen.
SPEAKER_02:So in this episode, we're going to talk to Mora Gross, a walking artist, activist, and academic. She is the founder of the Loiterers Resistance Movement, I love that name, and a senior lecturer in human geography at the University of Liverpool.
SPEAKER_01:I know. You're very excited about this one, aren't you, Damler? So in Borough's academic focus is on urban feminist and crypt geographies and qualitative methods. Her work looks at public space, regeneration, access, equality, psychogeographies, and the power of creative communal walking. Perfect fit for us. She's also chair of Our Irwell, a community group dedicated to protecting, promoting, and progressing public access to the River Irwell. Her first book, which I am enjoying hugely, Morag, is The Feminist Art of Walking, which was published by Pluto this October. So, Moreg, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to Delmar myself.
SPEAKER_03:Hey, thanks so much for the uh invitation. It's lovely to see you both. Thanks a lot.
SPEAKER_01:So it's great to have you with us today, Morag. Before getting deep into your teachings and the monograph, could you tell us about your personal story a little bit? So, how did you become obsessed with public spaces? Why do they mean so much to you?
SPEAKER_03:Oh, that's a really good question and quite a big one. So I guess I'll keep it brief. I suppose what I'm interested in is how we get to feel at home or feel like we belong in a space. And for me, one of the ways that I get to know somewhere is through walking and through being open to the kind of serendipity and the kind of poetry of the pavement that only happens when you go for a walk, because you never quite know what's going to happen. And I become increasingly aware that there is a really important kind of civic and social function for these places as well, because they're where we meet our neighbours or see people who are different to us, even if we don't particularly like them. You know, we get along, we we deal with that. And you never quite know who you might bump into or the kinds of conversations you might have. And I think that's incredibly powerful. And so when I talk about public space, I do mean the kind of places like civic squares and you know public parks that you might think of. But I also want to think about pavements and bus stops and railway stations and all these places where we're outside of the domestic sphere, right? And we're not completely in control of what's going on because I think that's beautiful and powerful to be outside to see what's around us. And I think really importantly at this point in time, certainly in the UK and I suspect in other places, it feels more important than ever to show that we can use these places for play and creativity and you know, convivial conversation rather than giving up that space to commerce or people that kind of seek to divide us all by, you know, aggressively putting up flags. And, you know, there are people with ill intent out there. And one of the things we can do as a very kind of gentle activism, or I call it creative mischief, right? Just showing that we can use the streets for something different and gentle and making space for ourselves feels absolutely to me essential. And if we lose public space, we will lose something that is really precious, but that we often just take for granted.
SPEAKER_02:Wow. I mean, some words do keep uh popping in our show, like the mischiefs and the playfulness, and I love it. I love that we have this kind of sentimental and philosophical bond all together from very different people, right, Steve?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, I know, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, playfulness could be a thing. We could re-rebadge the podcast as the playful podcast.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, maybe. Let's think about it. So, Morag, in 2006, you found that the psychogeographical collective, the LRM, I mean loiterers resistance movement, which I love. Can you give us a hint on the conceptual frame here? Because I mean, resistance, loitering all together, one cannot miss the kinship between this and Oblomov's laziness as an exantial rebellion. And I love Oblomov, by the way.
SPEAKER_03:So Yeah, I mean, I have to be honest, when when the LRM started, I hadn't really read a lot of the theory. It just felt like intrinsically something to do. Something, you know, we're based in Manchester, UK. And at the time, there were two strands of my life. So my day job, I was a community worker, and I was really conscious of the massive inequality that was accelerating at the same time as, you know, gentrification and redevelopment in the city centre. You know, people were becoming alienated. And I was also involved in a social center called the basement that was founded on anarchist principles of kind of mutual aid and gift giving and trying to provide a non-commercial hub for the city centre. So we had like a bookshop and a vegan cafe, and really importantly, an exhibition space and place for people to just meet and exchange ideas. So that kind of atmosphere of experimentation. And a lot of people there were interested in the ideas of the Situationist International and breaking down the spectacle by which they kind of meant the kind of all-encompassing images that are around us. So the kind of advertising that is everywhere, and you can kind of almost see it as a kind of mental pollution or corruption because we're always being sold to. Everything is being closed down and alienating. And what can we do to challenge that? I won't go into that theory too much, and and some of it is quite problematic. So, you know, there's kind of echoes of colonialism and misogyny and some of that. But I hadn't read any of this at the time. I like the slogans and I like this idea of psychogeography, where we use our body as a tool to explore and investigate and to connect with space. And with psychogeography, we use what we call the derive or the drift. So it is a kind of walk that is based on dice throwing or using an old map or looking for, I don't know, yellow cars, or following squirrels or pigeons or your nose or something like that. And it seemed to me like a fun thing to do, quite importantly, because you know, social justice work is hard and tiring and everyone needs a bit of respite. And I felt like getting out of the social centre onto the pavement helped brand some people. We could also have conversations with people from outside who might not feel comfortable coming in to that kind of space, but who share the same concerns, the same social concerns, but from different perspectives. So we started the kind of wandering, and I didn't necessarily think 20 years later we would still be doing it. But for me, it became a really important way of having those conversations. And I guess it's just worth saying that traditionally, when you hear about psychogeography, people often think about kind of lone wanderers or this idea of the flannel that is this kind of able-bodied kind of male person who really importantly, this idea that they kind of move through space without touching it or without being touched by it. And I find that idea really dangerous and terrible. And probably significantly, I didn't know about the flannel when I started, or I would have thought it's not for me. Because for me, how this works is because we walk together. It's really important that it's communal and it's open and it's always free for whoever wants to to drift in and drift out with us. And it recognises that we are none of us are lone individuals, but all part of these really complex networks of care and also on exploitation and capitalism as well. You know, we're looking at trying to make some of those invisible power lines a bit visible and to kind of disrupt them a little bit. Because if we look at, you know, a map of the city centre or where you are or where you're not meant to go, we know that people's hearts and their lives transcend those borders, and we know that they're only ever lines on a map drawn by someone else. So it's an invitation to explore and kind of redraw the city in whatever way you you like.
SPEAKER_01:Amazing. And totally amazing. I love well, we both, uh Damn and I both love all that. So I mean, that does touch on we were gonna talk about that 2015 piece on confession. It was in the book, was it a book or report? Was it a book?
SPEAKER_03:Oh, yeah, it's a book, it was like Ang Tina Richardson's book about walking inside out one. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And you had a a chapter in there which was Confessions of a Narcoflanners?
SPEAKER_03:Is it yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So was that the first time that phrase had been coined? Is that completely new? And and that that was a decade ago. Yeah. Is is your role as an anarcho-flanners still is it still evolving? What's the Yeah?
SPEAKER_03:Do you know that I mean that book felt quite important in that a lot of previous work on psychogeography kind of looks at this kind of canon of like usual suspects? And I'm really keen on making space for new voices. And Tina did a really brilliant job there of bringing together a lot of people that were actually doing the walking. Because like talking about walking, writing about walking is quite weird. Because actually, what we want to do is walk about walking, right? Yeah, and and I have to say, my I mean, my contribution to it in some ways, nothing has changed, but actually everything has changed because I mean, at that point, I was on the cusp of quitting my job to begin my PhD, which looked at women's experiences of walking in in Manchester, and I was much more connected with ideas around walking art than I was at the beginning of the LRM. I had never really heard of walking art. So these things have changed, but actually, the very heart of everything I do, this idea of you know, the streets belong to everyone, this is the LRM motto. And, you know, we wrote our manifesto in I think about 2006. The the time is a little bit slippery because you know, uh psychogeography and walking is often about time travel. You know, you can see the layers of the past in the streets, and you can also make spaceful dreams and visions of uh of a new city. So the time is slightly sketchy, but I think it was 2005. And when I wrote that and said the streets belong to everyone, that's still at the heart of everything I do. So yes, it's changed, but also no, it hasn't really.
SPEAKER_02:Wow, I just want to keep listening to her. I don't want to ask any questions, just keep listening to that. So you said walking is also time traveling, and that's really very effective because in Istanbul, in Manchester, in other cities, when you walk a city, you also see uh the history, the memories, and the collective memory that sparks so many memories and so many ideas on my hand, head. And I think walking is not only an action, but a concept that has deep philosophical and cultural roots in every society as you talk. And one of my favorite philosophers in Turkey has a book dedicated just to walking. The name is also walking, and there he states one cannot help the walker without walking. The sedent cannot understand the walker, the only way of helping on the way is walk together, side by side. And then he adds and says that help doesn't exist anyway. The only thing, as I said, is to walk side by side, and this kind of perspective binds the feminist solidarity and the anarchic anti-hierarchy to walking.
SPEAKER_04:Can you tap into that conceptual bond a bit? Oh, yeah. Do you know what?
SPEAKER_03:That's a beautiful quote. I need to read this book, or if it's in translation, my language skills are terrible, but that's something that I will carry with me when I walk on. So yeah, I mean, for me, that that there is a very strong kind of feminist, the idea that the personal is political, and for some people, taking up space or going for a walk is more problematic than it is for others. And just to go back to that philosophy of the derive as well, that the reason that we do it is this idea that you're breaking through the kind of that spectacle or that kind of capitalist monotony and breaking open spaces of imagination and and conversation. And I think getting out of our routine is is always great for that. But you know, for many of us, the opportunity to weave that into everyday life and to kind of try and find a bit of enchantment in between the kind of grind of everything is really valuable because, you know, more realistic than a retreat. But for me, the other thing that is really important in a philosophy of walking and something that I was really clear about is that we need to allow many different ways of walking. So it's not just about two feet, it's about wheelchairs, it's about sticks and assistive technology. So as a disabled person, there are places that I can't walk because the world is not built for me and people like me, you know? And I really want to try and keep those public spaces I mentioned, need to be accessible in in all kinds of ways. And my broad philosophy would be that we need to think about a really holistic view of what we mean by access and walking that builds in all these kind of enabling infrastructures. And some of those are material, like the stay off pavements, or are there benches? Because for lots of people, walking also needs not walking and resting. And does it include things like you know, accessible toilet facilities or that kind of thing? But it is also cultural as well, because we know there are many reasons why people can't walk. So, you know, as a woman, there are definitely places that I would feel rightly nervous to walk on my own. And, you know, I for many people there'll also be racism or transphobia or Islamophobia or many other kind of prejudices and messages that make you feel not safe and belonging. So I think any conversation about a philosophy of walking now has to acknowledge the many different ways that people walk and the many different barriers to this beautiful connection. Because you're right, I think walking side by side. So in my research, I quite often use walking interviews because we sit at a table and an interview can be really intimidating, right? Even with the best will in the world, sitting opposite someone on a desk can feel intimidating, or there's a hierarchy that's very obvious. And when we walk side by side, then it often becomes easier to have a conversation. And it doesn't dissolve that power relationship totally, but it makes it somehow easier and also more able to respond to the environment, to think about what really matters here and now, because you're out in it and you are open to the elements and the surprise that can happen, you know. You never have the same walk twice, even on the same road, is always different.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, so I'm I and you know, the other thing I'm conscious of, I don't know about in Turkey Damler, but a moment in the UK, I feel like walking is kind of on trend. It's there's something going on at the moment. And it's like, don't you think so?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, do you know what it's it's kind of weird, right? So I've been doing psychogeography for, you know, it is surprisingly about 20 years. And I've also had, you know, things about me that are occasionally on trend, right? Psychogeography, I have pink hair, I love country music, I wear polka dots all up, all these things every so often become fashionable, right? And I find that fascinating, but go with it, because actually there's something about persistence and carrying on. And I do think the current attention on walking is partly because of the pandemic, actually, which was terrible. And I am never gonna sugarcoat that because it exacerbated all kinds of inequalities. And we know the pandemic isn't over, and we know the impact of it isn't over. But one thing that happened, certainly in the UK, was for many people, walking and walking in their neighbourhood was something that they could do at a time and they couldn't do a lot else. So people often reconnected or made new connections or explored spaces that they may not have been able to do. So they came to appreciate some of the maybe the nature in their neighborhood or things like that, which felt different and it was kind of respite from what was going on. I think that's part of it. I think rightly the focus on sustainability, which is super important, and you know, walking is generally, you know, an extremely sustainable way to move. I could be very cynical and say it's also quite cheap in terms of things we know. I'm I'm very cynical about well-being narratives and walking because I think well-being narratives are very individualistic often and can really harm people who are disabled or who have chronic health conditions. Like, we don't want a walking that people feel they have to do or that is very puritanical and like, let's just, you know, you have to do this. That feels quite problematic a lot of the time for me, especially when we know there's inequality of access to places. Like, actually, quite often you're not able to go to the city.
SPEAKER_01:Sorry, Damler, we're gonna go a little a little bit off scripture. I hope you don't mind. Uh, because I want to get back to urban design in a minute, but that's really interesting, Maura, because I'm really interested in uh Damler and I work in this space where we quite often refer to values in the campaigns that we do. And there might be human rights campaigns, there might be climate change campaigns. But if you look at the values map that quite often we'll use to look at what kind of values are we trying to trigger in our audience and individualistic, hedonistic, pleasure-based values actually, when you look at the evidence base, crowd out the collectivist values. And that's really interesting that you should say that. And the other thing, would you then challenge? There's a trend, certainly here in the UK, for the idea of social prescribing of something like a walk from your GP to say, what how rather than me give you these drugs, how about doing a 2K walk every other day? What how do you feel about that?
SPEAKER_03:Uh I wouldn't challenge it if it's what an individual wants, right? Because there are massive physical and mental well-being benefits to walk. And actually, some of the research we did during the pandemic really highlights that. So I'm not saying those things are bad, but I'm saying they should be a choice and people should have the dignity of choice and not feel like that's the only narrative. Because for a lot of disabled or connected people, they kind of all they kind of perceive as this bossiness or this idea that you have to do that. So I think actually to go back to what you were talking about as time travel and walking, there's the concept of crick time that I find really valuable, and it's been developed by various academics. So I'm I'm borrowing this term off of other people. But the the idea of a crip time acknowledges that different people move at different speeds. Right. And so often, for example, it will take people longer to do something. But also when you are disabled or ill, time stops or it isn't easily linear because you might find that actually you have to spend a month in bed and you lose things. And what happens then? How do you catch up? What do you experience? Or you have to change your foot future plans because something has happened that you didn't see happening. And actually, as a society, we don't appreciate those different paces and we don't appreciate cryptime. So that, you know, a two-mile walk for somebody may take a lot of extra energy or a lot of extra effort or require things like this benches or, you know, an accessible form of transport to get somewhere. And we need to think about that and to kind of value those different bodies. So for lots of people, absolutely, yes, a walk is brilliant and fantastic. But for me, it's always about not essentializing anything and giving that choice and understanding that kind of plurality, really.
SPEAKER_02:No, I think she also really tapped into the design and urban design and how the cities are designed. We don't have to say it really out loud, but maybe we do have to, because almost all of the cities around the world are designed for the male population who is between the ages of 25 to 45 and healthy. And the others, all of us, don't exist actually, but that's a very, very long conversation. And I'm so sorry that we are close to our end time. So I'm gonna go directly to the feminist art of work walking, the book. So, how has the reactions been so far? Do you think you can expand your circle of influence to recruit more anarcho-flanusists?
SPEAKER_04:Oh, I really hope so.
SPEAKER_03:And I do like the contradiction of that term. Like I tend not to talk about use the term as much now because I want to emphasize the the collective, but I do think there's something very subversive about that idea of anarcho-flanus. Yeah, the reception has been uh overwhelming in the best possible way, to be honest. So we've been on tour around the UK, and I'm just smiling to myself as I say this, because originally I thought that we would have an event in Manchester and probably one in Liverpool, and you know, maybe if I was lucky somewhere else, and it kind of turned into this like I think it's now at 17 dates. And uh, we finish in Wales on Saturday, but we don't actually. There's an extra date in Chester, and now we have more in the new year because people just keep asking. And I'm very I will always say yes to an invitation, you know. But it's been amazing to meet people who find that the ideas really resonate, and to know that people have been using my work or have been kind of watching that LRM from afar. It's been genuinely like, yeah, I I I am not usually lost for words, but as I said, like overwhelmed in the best way. And I'm my heart is so full by the people that I've been meeting and the questions and the conversations that are definitely carrying forward. And I feel like so. There's been a few times when I've thought that you know the LRM or this work is probably done. And I thought that when we had we had a 10th anniversary celebration a while ago, well, now uh nine years ago, and I thought after this, maybe enough. But what happens is more people join and you realize that the stories of the city and the walk and the work is never finished. So we carry on, and now that idea for that fight for public space and for valuing diversity and for genuinely having you know the streets belonging to everyone feels more urgent and more important than ever. So, yeah, I'm carrying on and just absolutely delighted by the response of the book. So, yeah, thank you.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, I love it. So I'm about to do something terrible, Damler. I'm about I'm gonna deliver a really cheesy line. The walk is never finished, but this podcast is. So we final question for you, Morag. Is our network is ironically called Do Not Smile, because we believe that sustainability is something that should bring happiness into the world. So our final question to you is what object, place, or person always makes you smile?
SPEAKER_03:Oh, oh God, there's so many. Okay, I'm gonna say the place on the people, whatever happens on a first Sunday, because every month what happens is I put an invitation out and I stand somewhere in Greater Manchester and wait to see who comes and where we will go. And it always brings joy. It's just, and I love that I can't tell you for sure because there is so many places, and for me, it's always what next, or what's around the corner. So I get joy from the LRM. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:That's a beautiful thing. Well, Damel, I don't know what you think. We'd love to talk to Mer Morad. We're gonna have to come back and do second episode on patriarchy and urban design. I think. Oh, yeah. How can we do that? You're so we'll let's we'll work out the logistics later, Dam. I'm sure we can make it work. The working, several time zones, different cities. We can do that, can't we?
SPEAKER_03:You can't do anything.
SPEAKER_02:That's the spirit. So thanks to everyone who has listened to our Goodgeist podcast brought to you by the Do Not Smile Network of Agencies.
SPEAKER_01:And make sure you listen to future episodes. We'll be talking to more amazing people about how we can work together to create a more sustainable future. So, Damla Morag, C Sing.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you. Bye. Bye.
SPEAKER_00:Goodgeist, a podcast series on sustainability, hosted by Damla Ozler and Steve Connor. Brought to you by the DNS Network.
