Museum of Walking: Spatializing Experience

Urban spaces contain many overlapping layers of lived experience that define the city: personal memories, collective histories, cultural significance, generational traumas and community celebrations. We most often experience urban space individually as we navigate our daily lives, even as we walk through places that have been traversed many times before compiling infinite meanings and memories. With this event, we will walk together through these layers of history and present to deepen our awareness of place through shared experience.

Together we will walk Steele Indian School Park to explore the multilayered experiences of this place, overlaying its history as the Phoenix Indian School from 1890 through 1990 to its transition into a popular urban escape in 2001. 

This walk is planning in collaboration with the Museum of Walking. It is organized by the 2018–19 Institute for Humanities Research Faculty Fellows, who will be providing reflections on walking, public space and layers of history and experience along the way. They will be joined by Patty Talahongva for historical context and personal experience of the Phoenix Indian School, as well as Angela Ellsworth, artist instigator of the Museum of Walking.