“It was great to see or imagine what was being talked about existing in front of you. I liked ‘moving through time’ as we walked around the park, incorporating physical movement into that. I also really liked being in Kelvingrove Park and surrounded by how it is now, today, contrasted with the subjects and history we were talking about in the same space.”
Walking tour participant
slow walking / close looking
At its core, Critical Walking involves researching, creating and delivering free walking tours about how Glasgow’s built environment and civic collections have been shaped by slavery, colonialism and imperialism.
Led by Rosie Spooner and first developed in 2018, these walking tours center on Kelvingrove Park, the first purpose-designed public public in Glasgow and one of the oldest in Scotland, as well as the adjacent municipal museum, Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum.
These public tours are regularly offered as part of events programmes, such as Black History Month in Scotland, the Glasgow Doors Open Days Festival and the Architecture Fringe. Rosie also gives private tours for school, college and university groups, professional associations and community organisations.
Each tour lasts about two hours and is an opportunity to slow down and spend time engaging with and thinking about the spaces that surround us. These walking tours are about questioning the heritage that is preserved and presented in the public realm, while also acknowledging and recognising those histories, voices and perspectives that aren’t. The experience of walking Glasgow’s streets, parks and museums is a way to deepen understandings of the city’s historic involvement in empire and the ongoing legacies of this.
Are you a cultural producer or community organiser interested in featuring a walking tour of Kelvingrove Park or Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum in an events programme you are organising? Get in touch through the Contact page.
It’s also possible to arrange private tours (e.g., school, college and university groups, professional associations, community organisations, etc.), so don’t hesitate to reach out.
“Walking has created paths, roads, trade routes; generated local and cross-continental senses of place; shaped cities, parks; generated maps, guidebooks, gear, and, further afield, a vast library of walking stories and poems … The landscapes, urban and rural, gestate the stories, and the stories bring us back to the sites of this history.”
Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking (2014).