What do you think?
The Feminist Art of Walking
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.
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.
240 pages, Paperback
Published October 20, 2025
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 10, 2026
This is a powerful argument for walking as art and an act of resistance, and for reclaiming public spaces and making them inclusive and accessible to everyone. Morag Rose combines autobiographical detail with social history, psychogeography (something I definitely want to read further on) and interviews with activists. It packs in a lot while still being really engaging and enjoyable to read.
(One small parochial gripe: a good chunk of the chapter on Liverpool was actually about Manchester, which had its own chapter. That's probably just Scouse pettiness on my part, though.)
(One small parochial gripe: a good chunk of the chapter on Liverpool was actually about Manchester, which had its own chapter. That's probably just Scouse pettiness on my part, though.)
August 27, 2026
Morag Rose - The Feminist Art of Walking (2025, Pluto Press)
For Rose, walking is ‘more than pedestrian...anything but. It provides an opportunity for multi-sensual exploration and a deep connection with space, place and communities. Walking can be a powerful, artistic, creative and political act.’
‘Men are not banished or dismissed, and they are included where I feel they are relevant and incongruent with the themes I am covering...My feminism is intersectional, transinclusive and always learning, it strives to be better and believes in a more equitable and just world for everyone. The patriarchy harms us all’.
I first came across Morag Rose when I read the comprehensive psychogeography anthology 'Walking Inside Out' edited by Tina Richardson (2015). Rose’s essay Confessions of an Anarcho-Flaneuse or Psychogeography the Mancunian Way in this anthology piqued my curiosity and I’ve avidly followed her writings ever since.
Rose is a self-confessed anarcho-flaneuse, a wonderful and very aptly-coined term, and this book is a culmination of her experiences both as one woman walking through the urban streets of Manchester (and other cities and towns) and a collective of like-minded people, The Loiterer’s Resistance Movement (LRM - http://thelrm.org/) which she co-founded twenty years ago in 2006.
For Rose – and countless others – walking (here, classified as an umbrella term for moving through space – so the term ‘walking’ includes wheeling and using mobility aids) is not merely a form of physical movement but moreover it is a creative practice, a mindful practice that can and does embody play, curiosity, excitement, enchantment and perhaps most of all, emancipation).
It is also about action and activism and about defiance. It is about reclaiming space, reclaiming streets and public spaces for the masses and the marginalised, about recovering wellness and creative inspiration and reaffirming diverse identities, particularly those that intersection gender identity, sexual orientation, race and nationality, disability and neurodivergence, social class and subcultures.
Rose herself lives with a physical disability so this impacts on her walking abilities and experiences, but in fact has found that slow walking, frequent pauses and hence, ‘loitering’ ultimately results in an immersive, curiosity-evoking, sensory walking experience. And it is this aspect of ‘loitering’ – along with its resistance to the capitalist-spawned, time-constrained ‘hurrying’ through public space – which is celebrated both by the LRM and in this book.
The Feminist Art of Walking probes deeper into the everyday walking experiences of women (cis, trans and gender-fluid people) and the myriad ways in which they (we) are subjected to misogyny and denied the right to take up space. Rose speaks to a number of women across the UK as well as referring to other studies, projects and accounts from women on a global level, including countries such as Spain, South Africa, India and Afghanistan. She also reflects on her own experiences of growing up in – and returning to southeast coast town Eastbourne, and also visits other UK towns and cities such as Sheffield, Ebbw Vale, Stockport, Liverpool and of course, Manchester, the home of the LRM to explore their physical and psychogeographical landscapes.
In doing so, Rose also discusses wider common themes of gentrification, the historical and continued dominance of patriarchal capitalism and the legacies of colonialism and imperialism. She discusses whether psychogeography can be expanded to include non-urban places and spaces, specifically citing artist Jane Samuels’ work Terrain: Anatomical Landscapes (https://www.jane-samuels.com/).
This intrigued me particularly as I also agree that psychogeography cannot and should not be confined to the realm of the urban; in fact I would argue that its very elusive, divisive and subjective nature means that to categorise and contain it in this way is, in fact, tautological. She also debunks the myth of the ‘rural idyll’:
‘The rural idyll is just a nonsense but somehow it has become part of our national identity...I blame the Romantic poets, and capitalism – the invention of work needed a counterbalance and whitewashed sugary nostalgia has always sold – and this became reified over time.
’
Instead, Rose advocates for grass-roots, inclusive communities, activist movements and projects which focus on the walking experiences of migrants and Black and brown women; particularly in more rural environments dominated overwhelmingly by white walkers and rural racism is a reality. Rose gives the examples of Black Girls Hike UK, Sheffield Environmental Movement (SEM), Wanderlust Women and Muslim Hikers, who aim to break down barriers in people of colour accessing and enjoying nature and green spaces.
‘Exclusion and extravism are written in the fields and hedgerows just as they are factory chimneys. We need to be there, in the fells and fields and woods, to begin rewriting a new countryside code.’
Returning to the city streets of Greater Manchester (amongst others), Rose also refers to the significant work of feminist writer and geographer Leslie Kern, who in her 2019 study Feminist City, examined the gendered, ableist design of city centres and the lack of public facilities and conveniences, such as toilets, additional space on buses for wheelchairs and pushchairs, benches, sheltered areas, baby changing facilities (and the list goes on) that disproportionately impact women and disabled people.
Perhaps above all, this book is about protecting and protesting the right for all people, all bodies, to take up space and to loiter, because public space belongs to all of us. Walking, sitting, standing, watching, listening, moving and lingering – loitering in and through public space, whether urban or rural, suburban or coastal, should be a way of connecting all of us. It should not be a platform for divisive elements to be manipulated, exploited and exacerbated by the patriarchal, capitalist systems that design, drive and dominate it.
As Rose rightly concludes, ‘I loiter and I want us to loiter together, because this space is ours. It belongs to everyone and we are all connected. There is not one true, authentic or right path made by walking, there are many...our power is multiplied when we walk together, collectively, grounded where we are while building wider solidarities’.
For Rose, walking is ‘more than pedestrian...anything but. It provides an opportunity for multi-sensual exploration and a deep connection with space, place and communities. Walking can be a powerful, artistic, creative and political act.’
‘Men are not banished or dismissed, and they are included where I feel they are relevant and incongruent with the themes I am covering...My feminism is intersectional, transinclusive and always learning, it strives to be better and believes in a more equitable and just world for everyone. The patriarchy harms us all’.
I first came across Morag Rose when I read the comprehensive psychogeography anthology 'Walking Inside Out' edited by Tina Richardson (2015). Rose’s essay Confessions of an Anarcho-Flaneuse or Psychogeography the Mancunian Way in this anthology piqued my curiosity and I’ve avidly followed her writings ever since.
Rose is a self-confessed anarcho-flaneuse, a wonderful and very aptly-coined term, and this book is a culmination of her experiences both as one woman walking through the urban streets of Manchester (and other cities and towns) and a collective of like-minded people, The Loiterer’s Resistance Movement (LRM - http://thelrm.org/) which she co-founded twenty years ago in 2006.
For Rose – and countless others – walking (here, classified as an umbrella term for moving through space – so the term ‘walking’ includes wheeling and using mobility aids) is not merely a form of physical movement but moreover it is a creative practice, a mindful practice that can and does embody play, curiosity, excitement, enchantment and perhaps most of all, emancipation).
It is also about action and activism and about defiance. It is about reclaiming space, reclaiming streets and public spaces for the masses and the marginalised, about recovering wellness and creative inspiration and reaffirming diverse identities, particularly those that intersection gender identity, sexual orientation, race and nationality, disability and neurodivergence, social class and subcultures.
Rose herself lives with a physical disability so this impacts on her walking abilities and experiences, but in fact has found that slow walking, frequent pauses and hence, ‘loitering’ ultimately results in an immersive, curiosity-evoking, sensory walking experience. And it is this aspect of ‘loitering’ – along with its resistance to the capitalist-spawned, time-constrained ‘hurrying’ through public space – which is celebrated both by the LRM and in this book.
The Feminist Art of Walking probes deeper into the everyday walking experiences of women (cis, trans and gender-fluid people) and the myriad ways in which they (we) are subjected to misogyny and denied the right to take up space. Rose speaks to a number of women across the UK as well as referring to other studies, projects and accounts from women on a global level, including countries such as Spain, South Africa, India and Afghanistan. She also reflects on her own experiences of growing up in – and returning to southeast coast town Eastbourne, and also visits other UK towns and cities such as Sheffield, Ebbw Vale, Stockport, Liverpool and of course, Manchester, the home of the LRM to explore their physical and psychogeographical landscapes.
In doing so, Rose also discusses wider common themes of gentrification, the historical and continued dominance of patriarchal capitalism and the legacies of colonialism and imperialism. She discusses whether psychogeography can be expanded to include non-urban places and spaces, specifically citing artist Jane Samuels’ work Terrain: Anatomical Landscapes (https://www.jane-samuels.com/).
This intrigued me particularly as I also agree that psychogeography cannot and should not be confined to the realm of the urban; in fact I would argue that its very elusive, divisive and subjective nature means that to categorise and contain it in this way is, in fact, tautological. She also debunks the myth of the ‘rural idyll’:
‘The rural idyll is just a nonsense but somehow it has become part of our national identity...I blame the Romantic poets, and capitalism – the invention of work needed a counterbalance and whitewashed sugary nostalgia has always sold – and this became reified over time.
’
Instead, Rose advocates for grass-roots, inclusive communities, activist movements and projects which focus on the walking experiences of migrants and Black and brown women; particularly in more rural environments dominated overwhelmingly by white walkers and rural racism is a reality. Rose gives the examples of Black Girls Hike UK, Sheffield Environmental Movement (SEM), Wanderlust Women and Muslim Hikers, who aim to break down barriers in people of colour accessing and enjoying nature and green spaces.
‘Exclusion and extravism are written in the fields and hedgerows just as they are factory chimneys. We need to be there, in the fells and fields and woods, to begin rewriting a new countryside code.’
Returning to the city streets of Greater Manchester (amongst others), Rose also refers to the significant work of feminist writer and geographer Leslie Kern, who in her 2019 study Feminist City, examined the gendered, ableist design of city centres and the lack of public facilities and conveniences, such as toilets, additional space on buses for wheelchairs and pushchairs, benches, sheltered areas, baby changing facilities (and the list goes on) that disproportionately impact women and disabled people.
Perhaps above all, this book is about protecting and protesting the right for all people, all bodies, to take up space and to loiter, because public space belongs to all of us. Walking, sitting, standing, watching, listening, moving and lingering – loitering in and through public space, whether urban or rural, suburban or coastal, should be a way of connecting all of us. It should not be a platform for divisive elements to be manipulated, exploited and exacerbated by the patriarchal, capitalist systems that design, drive and dominate it.
As Rose rightly concludes, ‘I loiter and I want us to loiter together, because this space is ours. It belongs to everyone and we are all connected. There is not one true, authentic or right path made by walking, there are many...our power is multiplied when we walk together, collectively, grounded where we are while building wider solidarities’.
November 4, 2025
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.
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.
November 6, 2025
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
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
December 3, 2025
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 ❤️
December 7, 2025
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!
More moving than I had anticipated.
As always, Morag has left me with the feeling that we Psychogeorgraphers can change the world!
December 5, 2025
Feminism, psychogeography, loitering as resistance.
What's not to love about this book?
What's not to love about this book?
March 7, 2026
Beautiful Dorothy Wordsworth quote in this book: "no prisoner in this lonely room...no need of motion, or of strength, or even breathing the air: - I thought of Nature's loveliest scenes; and with memory I was there."
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews