The Feminist Art of Walking

by Morag Rose

The allure of the city is powerful, but not universally accessible. For many women, it can be exclusionary, exploitative and dangerous. In The Feminist Art of Walking, Morag Rose shows how women can and do claim their place in the public space.



Setting off to explore cities and towns across Britain, she traces local histories and personal stories and attunes herself to the wider resonances of women’s rights amidst alienating capitalist cityscapes. Craving connection and comradeship, she discovers a unique and inclusive approach to walking, celebrating diverse women who transform walking into an art form and act of resistance.



By experiencing the pleasures and pains of urban exploration, she shows us how to reconnect with and become enchanted by our streets.

Genres: Nonfiction

240 pages, Paperback

Published October 20, 2025

Reviews

[Phil Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mora Rose combines a deeply felt autobiographical account of her own walking with a series of broad sweeps through the history of women’s resistant walking; all the time informed by an understanding of the theoretical and down-to-earth practical dynamics of place and space. While the issues here are often not novel, indeed their recalcitrance and resilience are parts of what makes them so problematical and troubling (intimidation, fear, urban design to suit a small privileged minority, destruction of facilitating resources, cultural and violent exclusion, generational trauma) what characterises ‘The Feminist Art Of Walking’ is the remarkable creativity and ingenuity of the ‘pedestrian’ responses. Mora Rose in less than two hundred pages takes us vividly into so many projects that have defied the discriminations and excklsuions: from the “hybrids, angels and giant rabbits” of Jane Samuels’s ‘Abandoned Buildings Project’ via Elspeth Penfold’s “walk with our ancestors” and Sonia Overall’s ‘Distance Drift’ and Clare Qualmann’s culinary ‘East End Jam’ “blending art with the everyday” to Zarina Dolan’s ‘Running Shoes’ audio walk re-defining the possibilities of theatre.
While there are outstanding individual activist-walkers, Morag Rose being one, like hers so much of the energy in feminist walking is expressed collectively in groups such as Black Girls Hike, walkwalkwalk, Muslim Hiker and The Wanderlust Women. In Rose’s case, this collectivism is worked through the Loiterers Resistance Movement (LRM), meeting once a month since 2006 to wander the streets of Manchester. It is a testimony to the blend of broad-based theory and passionate and particular activism – also characteristic of this book – that the LRM has sustained itself for so long; playful, artful, practical, revelatory and mindful of its own history.
Among the strongest features of ‘The Feminist Art Of Walking’ is the taut but embracing accounts of theories of resistant walking, revolving around the dérive of the Situationists (Morag Rose tears down the flâneur), broadening out its resistance to romanticism, moralistic ‘walking for health’ and instrumentalism to pull together ideas informing walking that have pushed back against the exclusion by attitude and hostility of black women walking, or against the architectural restrictions placed on disabled people. Morag Rose almost always builds out from particular ideas and practices to further ones; the book unfolds like a creative wander. So, walking in silence and attention to a soundscape turns to a consideration of “bodies as a shared site for choreography across time and place”, while the different pace – “crip time” – required by disabled or chronically ill people for a walk can, in Ellen Samuels’s words become “time travel”, the means to disrupt “linear, progressive time…. and cast us into a wormhole of backward and forward acceleration, jerky stops and starts”. The ‘Demolition Project’ of Debbie Kent and Alisa Oleva is both objectively focused on the “urban uncertainty” present at building sites, but it is also a walk in itself: “we would walk together even if no one comes, we just do it”.
This ‘just-doing-it’ is part of another strong feature here: the autobiographical narrative of Morag Rose herself, “a queer, disabled, working class woman from an English suburb” who, when nobody told her she could not be a psychogeographer, “I just went and did it”. When Morag Rose entered the walk, it was a far more male-dominated practice, but – along with others like Dee Heddon, Cathy Turner, Jo Norcup, Tina Richardson, Eléonore Ozanne, Amira Patel, Elspeth Owen, Lizzie Philps, Sara Shaarawi, Alison Lloyd and Monique Besten (who all, along with others, have their work mentioned here) – she has played a key part in turning that situation not only around but upside down. ‘The Feminist Art Of Walking’ is the story of techniques, scenarios and ideas that have transformed one small part of the margins, and inspired thousands of extraordinary experiences.

[Seán Fitton · Rating 5 out of 5]

The philosopher, Steve Ash, once wrote, "Our task is to re-enchant the world and make it magickal again". This book would serve as a pretty good instruction manual.

The art of a Walking Artist is a complex topic but one which Morag Rose makes both accessible and enjoyable. In fact, accessibility is at the heart of the book because the city is for everybody, not just those who can afford its shops, step over its obstacles and feel safe on its streets at night.

Using a combination of grass-roots politics, inclusive feminism, interviewees' anecdotes, history, rich imagination and wide-ranging personal experience, we are given the chance to understand places and our relationships with them from fresh and often unexpected perspectives. Those places specifically include Manchester, Liverpool, Eastbourne, Ebbw Vale, Sheffield and Stockport, but the principles of the Loiterers' Resistance Movement can be applied anywhere.

Above all, what struck me most is Dr Rose's infectious love of place and people. It's not at all an uncritical work, but it critiques with positivity and care.

I can't recommend it enough.
Seán Fitton PhD

[Jamie Halliwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an excellent book that literally takes you on a walk, meander, a journey, and a dérive across towns and cities such as Sheffield, Glossop, and Liverpool. Morag’s an academic, but this is written in such an accessible and easy to digest style - going between some walking or psychogeography theory, then taking the reader on a walk, so it feels you are walking with her as she describes in vivid detail her observations and interactions with people, space and place. Its such a powerful read, empowering everyone to walk in any shape or way that they can ❤️

[Liberty · Rating 5 out of 5]

As powerful and inspiring as I was expecting a book on walking from Morag Rose to be.
More moving than I had anticipated.
As always, Morag has left me with the feeling that we Psychogeorgraphers can change the world!

[Prenna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Feminism, psychogeography, loitering as resistance.

What's not to love about this book?