Date/Time
Date(s) - September 10, 2022 - September 12, 2022
12:00 am
Join the 10th Walk!
Ten days of organized walks in September 2022 will bring neighbors together explore the city’s edge…
Aug 1 – Registration opens for walk dates
via this website
Aug 8 – Registration opens for kickoff event & closing party
via FringeArts.com
Sept 8 – Virtual info session / kickoff celebration
Walk days:
Sept 10 / 11 / 12
Sept 17 /18 /19
Sept 23 / 24 / 25 / 26
Oct 1 – Closing celebration + reportback / in-person celebration of 10th walk (1,000+ miles!)
Philadelphia is large and contains multitudes. Along the city’s edge, one finds highways & waterways, ruined factories decaying & new housing being developed, a historic mansion alongside prisons. There’s shipyards, scrapyards, graveyards and farmyards. Amidst beautiful parks are piles of storage units, and so much more.
The oddly-shaped boundaries sometimes follow the curves of waterways and other times arbitrary-seeming straight lines drawn by surveyors. In some places, there’s no visual difference between either side; in other areas the contrasts are stark.
Walk Around Philadelphia is an opportunity for adventure and discovery close to home. It provides a physical challenge & sense of personal accomplishment. It cultivates civic pride & a humbling sense of scale. Along the way are opportunities to ponder themes of social & environmental justice, infrastructure & ecosystems, commerce & incarceration, indigenous history & colonization, privilege & access, and of course borders & boundaries.
The project holds space for authentic connection between individuals who might otherwise not cross paths. Rare in our world are opportunities to walk side by side for long, uninterrupted periods of time, and the experience of setting out walking together is in many ways an inclusive one: One participant noted “How easily the numbers ebbed and flowed with people joining for parts of the walk and how accepting and welcoming everyone was when you “landed” in the group.”
On the other hand, there are real barriers to participation ranging from accessibility issues to financial circumstances. These are the barriers that Walk Around Philadelphia has begun to address and will continue to as more resources become available.
