WALK PARTY

HOW IT WORKS

Everyone gathers in the chosen place. An envelope is handed out to each person. The envelope contains: a cootie catcher with 7 prompts and materials that support the activities to come. The host welcomes everyone to Walk Party and invites everyone to open their cootie catcher to the first prompt (prompts could include: reading a shared chant, playing telephone with a inanimate object or part of nature, teaching others some local history, etc). The group does as prompted. Host invites group to open the second prompt, which prompts a second activity, and on and on. The host may choose to get the group walking as the prompts are moved through, or the prompts might naturally get people moving. Walk Party is over when the cootie catcher is out of prompts. Participants might linger in a silly blissed out state, which is good!

PREP NEEDED

• Choose your location. The Original Walk Party™ was hosted in a public park with a lot of room to wander and limited potential to bug other people. Other settings Walk Party would do well in: a neighborhood, a business plaza, a shopping mall, a museum.

• Customize your cootie catcher. Grab the cootie catcher template below and use as-is or play around with the prompts yourself (yes! Do this!)

• Map out your “route”. Ideally the group is walking a bit – it’s in the name! Take a look or visit where you plan to host your Walk Party and make a loose plan for where you hope to walk. Maybe there are landmarks you want to hit at specific points in the journey (i.e. the bridge over the river for the poetry prompt). 

• Prepare any other materials needed for the Walk Party and stuff envelopes with these. Maybe you hide 3 poems in 3 random envelopes for 3 lucky poets-to-be to read. Or you give everyone a postcard to give to someone else. This is the most time consuming part of the whole thing, but can be fun and a good chance to immerse yourself in the environment you’re inviting others into. 

• Make a flyer and promote. Snag that flyer template below or make your own. Text it to everyone you know. Print it out and staple it to a telephone pole near you. Post it on the ancient events calendar for your local newspaper.

1,000 OTHER THINGS TO CONSIDER FOR HOSTS

• Music! You might want a bluetooth speaker with quiet music; this helps the group feel like a group. 

• Herding! Depending on your group size, you might want to find 1-2 other buddies to help you help everyone stay together.

• Having enough supplies! If you run out of envelopes, don’t sweat it, have people buddy up! 

• Your sources! If you include local history, make sure you’re checking out a few different sources or even checking in with a local historian/museum about them. This part felt the most daunting to me to get right, as it’s easy to tell a) the wrong story b) just a white man’s story c) a boring story, which could include all of the above.  

• Chaos! This thing is supposed to feel a little out of control and emergent, like you won’t know exactly how it will go. That’s a good thing! Lean into the looseness. 

• GO OVERBOARD! I made a custom stamp that said WALK PARTY that I could stamp on all of the envelopes. Prepping for this thing was half the fun; go a little overboard for yourself!

INSPIRATION

• Jane’s Walk – free, community-led conversations all over the world inspired by Jane Jacobs

• Teach-ins, a way to democratize + participat-ize leanring

• Sister Mary Corita Kent Mary’s Day Parade, “a startlingly bacchanalian procession that lay somewhere between a People’s Park be-in and a PTA meeting”

• The band Lightning Bolt and the art of Brian Chippendale

• Bennett Williamson and Nicole Lavelle’s Time Warp City Walk

• My own pleasurable experiences finding four leaf clovers