When I first created the work I was responding to my own experiences of same sex hand holding, and the complex tussle many of us navigate between visibility and vulnerability, public and private intimacy, activism and fear. I was interested in the distance between perceived equality through legislation and the reality of people’s lived experiences. 

I began doing some experiments walking and holding hands with different people and I became fascinated by the multiple ways in which our identities - including gender, age, ethnicity, disability, class, and our personal history or relationship with certain places, as well as the cultural codes inscribed in the design and upheld by the masses, affect our experience of public spaces; as if we are all carrying round personal psychogeographic maps in our heads, constantly being etched with new memories as we move through the urban landscape. I became compelled by the idea that in cities we share the same places with hundreds of people everyday, but may all be having a different experience of that space. 

So I created Walking:Holding with the desire to start to share and understand some of these differences. Initially I was very much thinking about the relationship between the person and the city, or the relationship between the pair and the public, who become a kind of unknowing secondary audience for the work. I sometimes like to think of it as a subtle pride march, meaning an area will be infiltrated with queer pairings over the days that it happens, without any explanation.

But there is another interaction which is equally significant in the work: the intimate relationship formed between the audience member and the performer. In different places, with different people, the dials on each of these dynamics vary.

It is a rare experience to be so close to a stranger, to allow yourself to be led, and to be given their undivided attention. Audience members are told before beginning that they can speak with the people they meet, there is no script, and it’s also fine if they want to be silent. The space this opens up can sometimes create moments of deep connection, or profound conversation with people feeling able to reveal things about themself they wouldn’t tell a close friend. I’ve realised there is something freeing in the structure of the work, in the moments of ephemeral intimacy which have clear boundaries. It is an opportunity for the audience member to be who they are in that moment with someone who has no prior knowledge of them, and whom they will probably never see again. The most common response to the project is one of joy, connection, liberation. The work opens up a space of possibility where we can imagine ourselves in very different identities and relationships with those around us.

In our competitive capitalist culture that teaches us to devalue our ties to others in order to succeed, and to mistrust strangers, Walking:Holding gives you an experience of walking through your town and imagining everyone as a potential hand holder or companion. Whilst it is about highlighting our differences, our privileges, and our subjectivity, it is also about connecting through hand holding to a shared humanity, and bringing attention to our interdependence, turning strangers into fellow humans and enlarging our capacity for empathy and connection.