Perambulator: An Artist’s Statement

This artist’s statement describes the development of a participatory performance project ‘Perambulator’. Conceived in response to the shift in walking practice experienced in early motherhood, the project invited other pram users (predominantly mothers) to walk together exploring and highlighting the everyday awkwardness of pram use in the city. Alongside an overview of the projects’ methods: walking, talking and mapping, connections to walking art and participatory art practices are considered.

This artist's statement describes the development of a participatory performance project 'Perambulator'. Conceived in response to the shift in walking practice experienced in early motherhood, the project invited other pram users (predominantly mothers) to walk together exploring and highlighting the everyday awkwardness of pram use in the city. Alongside an overview of the projects' methods: walking, talking and mapping, connections to walking art and participatory art practices are considered.
I began working with walking, incorporating it into my creative practice, in 2004.
In collaboration with the artists Gail Burton and Serena Korda we created a project entitled walkwalkwalk: an archaeology of the familiar and forgotten using walking to explore our local environment; the political meshwork of connections between people and places. We created a series of walks as live art events: nightwalks, a musical walk, guided tours, as well using walks as generators for other work: films, field recordings, performances and installations. I began to think of myself as a walking artist. Instead of saying no I decided to try to make a piece that would be possible to do with my baby in tow. In the first months of his life, pushing his pram around the area that I lived in, I was struck by the number of detours that I had to takethe route alterations, the impediments to smooth passage. My familiar routes were rudely disrupted, forcing a new relationship with the very physical details of the urban environment. A new radar evolves -seeking out the dropped kerbs and the ramps -avoiding steps, narrow gaps, awkward turns.
Perambulator (n.) A carriage for a baby or young child, which may be pushed along by a person on foot. Now usually shortened to pram.  Viewing the city through this new lens feels political. Losing the freedom of easy mobility -a freedom that I hadn't been aware of before -connects me to a massive group of people (predominantly women) in the same position, encumbered by wheels. This became the premise for Perambulator -making this visible through a mass walking with prams. So, simply, pram users were invited to meet at the gallery, and go for a walk around the neighbourhood.
Walking with prams around Lewisham Art House was awkward -kerbs were too high, cars were parked on pavements without leaving enough space to pass, steps were steep, gates designed to block mopeds from driving into parks were difficult to maneuver around. The walkers with prams chatted about their everyday issues, their sleep deprivation levels, and those without prams helpfully lifted, shifted, jiggled and had a go at pushing as we navigated.
By walking as a group we created a performance -the spectacle of multiple prams and their pushers negotiating each obstacle highlighted it far more than a The Baby Slow Marathon tied in to another walk -Kebede's Slow Marathon had been made into an annual event, and was due to take place at the end of my first week in town. I led a group of pram users along the route that the full marathon walkers used to come into town -going out to meet them, stopping at the point past which we could not wheel any further. We made it halfway up the Clashmach hill, a spot with a bench and a beautiful view, stopping there for a picnic shared with the long walkers as they passed us on their final descent.  As the project progressed people told me about the horrors of navigating the pavements on bin day, about forest walks they used to do before they had kids, about different approaches to walking-for-napping. I took a large map into playgroup and asked people to mark awkward spots, narrow pavements, steep steps, slippery surfaces. This process helped to shape plans for the Perambulator Parade,  I do have a genuine desire to recognise their ' other' roles as ' creative contributors'), but also in the face of the practical: if I do something that they don't want to do they simply won't come. It's a compromise between my desire for a genuine collaboration, and for a genuinely activist performance.
In the end the parade followed a popular leisure route from the Castle into town.
Around 30 people joined the procession, with a banner, flags, and decorated prams.
It made a finale to my project, a performative celebration of pram use, but it did not do what I had hoped in relation to occupying, commenting on, claiming or disrupting space.
Perhaps it's helpful not to consider the finale as the main event, or outcome, of the project, but to think about how the smaller, quieter activities functioned and operated in relation to my aims.
This connects onwards to the project post-Huntly. Writing about and talking about the work has been its continuation so far, enabling me to think extensively about its core ideas. Through this writing and talking new opportunities for doing and making are starting to emerge, prompting me to consider how a project can ebb