Guided Walk and Podcast Recital: ‘Do we have to relinquish masculinity to save our planet?’

Wednesday 1 November, 5.15pm-7pm

Meeting at: The Alan Shearer Statue, Barrack Road, by St James’ Park football stadium
Ending at: The Newbridge Project : Gateshead, 232-240 High Street, Gateshead, NE8 1AQ

FREE (£5 Deposit), please book

Join writer Dr Alex Lockwood for a guided walk and podcast recital exploring the complex nature of masculinity and men’s lives in Newcastle and Gateshead.

In this collaborative exploration you will be asked along with your fellow walkers to look at the social and physical fabric of our urban environment through a lens of gendered space and time. Weaving together a narrative of the ways that masculine culture has come to shape contemporary life with interviews from over a dozen academics, writers, feminists, activists and community leaders, the walk engages with how place shapes our lived experience. This walk embeds our everyday choices in the broader currents of climate change, social inequality, and the changing nature of human identity, asking you to consider how we can move from stuck places of damaging patterns, into fair and sustainable practices that bring forth resilience and restoration.

This co-participative walk is part of the Shift and Signal project, a series of podcasts and events exploring ways for us to go deeper in our adaptations to the contemporary environmental and social crises that we face. Asked to think about what it is we might have to relinquish if we are to survive the current moment and create a sustainable future, this first episode questions the dominant identity formations propping up our unsustainable Western lifestyles. The question “Do we have to relinquish masculinity to save our planet?” encapsulates this investigation.

This walk ends at The Newbridge Project on Gateshead High Street, where it is followed by a poetry and visual arts performance by Lisa Matthews and Melanie Ashby, who feature on the podcast. Please book for that event separately at this link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/poetry-performance-as-part-of-shift-and-signal-relinquish-masculinity-tickets-38934822101

To participate in the walk requires a £5 deposit which will be refunded within 24 hours of the event.

Please dress appropriately for the weather. A link to download the podcast for the walk will be emailed to you at least 48 hours ahead of the event. You will need to download the podcast in advance, or have enough data to stream the podcast from Soundcloud.com during the walk. Listening devices can be provided if this causes a barrier to your participation.

We look forward to walking with you! For further information, please contact alexlockwood@phonecoop.coop

Image: Image of man and woman talking in Newcastle alley (cc), Jeff Cape via Flickr/Creative Commons