Despite the dreadful weather, more than 20 people joined Martin Fidler, creator of the Ruskin Walk, to step out in John Ruskin’s shoes to discover Camberwell, where he lived for more than 40 years.  Each participant was given a hand assembled visual journal, in which prompts had been inserted, all of which were derived from techniques that John Ruskin, author, art citic, artist and social reformer, himself had used in his critical studies of housing and neighbourhoods.

Rethinking Cities had earlier commissioned Martin Fidler, to undertake a Ruskin Walk with delegates at a Talk the Walk eventon ‘making neighbourhoods more neighbourly’ at the South London Gallery back in April.  Martin was invited back to undertake this Ruskin Walk as part of the popular Wednesday After Work Walksthat Rethinking Cities is producing in July.

Participants are invited to draw, sketch and record their findings in their visual journals, and despite the rain, also enjoyed a bit of “scoping” of the site on which Henry Bessemer’s observatory once stood.  Once completed, the visual journals, can be disassembled as a panoramic narrative, and plans are afoot to exhibit some of these at local galleries.

Rethinking Cities and Martin Fidler have been awarded a seed grant to cover the cost of 60 visual journals by the Curry Fund at the Geologists’ Association, to develop four further Ruskin Walks focused on building stone and local geology, which are planned to take place in September and October.

You can find out even more about Ruskin Walks here

This article previously appeared on the Rethinking Cities website.