Monday, June 30 to Sunday, July 6, 2025, Prespa, Greece
International Prespa Walking Arts Encounters 2025 (WAC 25)
Walking Home / Walking in Transition
The International Prespa Walking Arts Encounters 2025 (WAC 25) will be titled Walking Home / Walking in Transition. We invite artists, writers and other creative practitioners, critics, and researchers to gather in Prespa, Greece in summer 2025 (Monday, June 30 to Sunday, July 6). Anyone wishing to participate as an attendee is also welcome.
The International Prespa Walking Encounters 2025 (WAC 25) is an event in the frame of the Creative Europe co-funded project Walking Arts & Local Communities (WALC), starting in January 2024 for four years. Initiated by seven partners from five countries, WALC establishes a larger International Center for Artistic Research and Practice of Walking Arts, in Prespa, Greece, at the border with Albania and North Macedonia, backed up by an online counterpart in the format of a digital platform for walking arts.
The Prespa area, a unique environment with two lakes (Megali Prespa and Mikri Prespa), is the locus where the field research of the walking art project Visual March to Prespa is taking place, organized by the 1st Painting Workshop of the School of Visual Arts of the University of Western Macedonia. It was initiated in 2007 and the current International Encounters/Conference is a continuation of three International Encounters/Conferences (WAC) in 2019, 2021, and 2023, during which over 600 participants from all over the world met in Prespa. Since 2024 WAC has been part of the WALC program.
The partners of WALC are Visual March to Prespes, University of Western Macedonia (Leader, Πανεπιστήμιο Δυτικής Μακεδονίας, UOWM, Greece), walk · listen · create (WLC, Belgium), WalkLab2.PT at the University of Minho (UMINHO, Universidade do Minho, Portugal), Contemporary Art Center Nau Côclea (Centre de Creació Contemporània Nau Côclea, Catalonia, Spain), Association Temps Réel (Gigacircus, France), Action Synergy SA (AS, Greece), School of Gaasbeek (De School van Gaasbeek, SvG, Belgium). Artistic co-ordinators of the WALC project are Geert Vermeire (WLC) and Yannis Ziogas (UOWM).
TOPICS
The topics of the International Prespa Walking Arts Encounters 2025 (WAC 25) Walking Home / Walking in Transition are the following:
- Walking as a feast
- Walking manifestos
- Walking beyond boundaries
- Walking as resistance
- Walking as healing
- Walking … home
- Walking with locals
- Pluriverse walking
- Walking to, with, and from communities
- Walking with children