The School of Pedestrian Culture

Developed and facilitated by artist Lucas Priest, The School of Pedestrian Culture (SoPC) is a participant-driven ‘walking classroom’ for the ‘play testing’ of psychogeographic games aimed at disorienting how we encounter space and place across the Scotland’s central belt. With a particular focus on exploring, encountering and drifting through sites of change, community resilience and capitalist expansion. The School emerged from a lacking sense of a collective pedagogy at the Edinburgh College of Art following the COVID-19 Pandemic. Interweaving walking and talking with local politics, community resilience, friendships and art, The SoPC challenges the way participants encounter public places and spaces through facilitated walking routes that reimagine cityscapes and urban histories.

Commissioned by the Centre for Research Collections at the University of Edinburgh and first delivered in conjunction with 'Resistance in Residence', an Exhibition at the Traveling Gallery, The SoPC’s newest walk explores the complexities of studentification as well as community campaigns in the Bonnington and Leith areas of Edinburgh. The walk will take approximately two to three hours with a walking distance of approximately 5 miles, across different types of terrains and varying inclines. The event takes place entirely outdoors.