Writing in 1869, the American Consul Elihu Burrit described, over the course of 414 pages,  the twenty mile radius of Birmingham, speaking of what he chose to call The Black Country  -  “with all its industries, in a green velvet binding inwrought or tapestried with historical scenes and early playgrounds of brilliant imagination and poetical fiction.” Burrit, the youngest of 10 children, was born in Connecticut in 1810. He worked as a blacksmith, studied linguistics, and was a vigorous campaigner for the abolition of slavery, the dignity of the working class and the cause of world peace. He was appointed to his post in the West Midlands by President Abraham Lincoln, where he served for several years.

Examining the character of Birmingham and its industrial environs, he wrote: “let the history-miner run his rod through and see what gems he will bring out… let him travel from rim to rim of the district, and study its physical conformation and its natural sceneries and he will recognise their symmetry with the histories and industries with which it teems.”

He was, it appears, a keen walker, not only producing Walks in the black country and its green border-land, but also A Walk from London to Lands’ End and back, with notes by the way (1865), and  A Walk from London to John O’Groat’s, with notes along the way (1864).

The British artist, Richard Long, makes art based on the activity of walking. For him, “A walk expresses space and freedom and the knowledge of it can live in the imagination of anyone, and that is another space too… A walk traces the surface of the land, it follows an idea, it follows the day and the night. A road is the site of many journeys. The place of a walk is there before a walk and after it.

There is almost no part of the English landscape which has not been moulded  and shaped by human hands, and no part of this urban landscape which has not been built upon and rebuilt, with stone and wood, brick, concrete, metal and plastic. Given the thousands of layers of human history on the surface – or just below the surface – of the land, this is rich territory indeed for artists to explore.

One such exploration (Changing Landscapes) is underway on the southern border of Birmingham in Kings Norton as part of the consultation processes for the redevelopment of the 3 Estates there - Primrose Hill, Pool Farm and Hawkesley, home to over 4000 households. A weekend of activity for residents was led by artist/historian Maurice Maguire to consider the changes on or around the landscape. Part of this included a guided walk on Sunday tracing the line of the Worcester-Birmingham canal between the two mouths of the Wast Hill Tunnel – which runs for 2,492 metres below ground. Over the past 200 years, the canal has been the one constant feature of this area. Maurice explained how the contours of the landscape we see today were formed to a great extent by the excavations carried out during its construction, the hillocks with bushes, trees and blackberries made from the original soil brought up from the diggings underground and dumped here.

The walk took a line (marked in blue with painted posts, surveyors paint, ribbons and chalk) across the 3 Estates area up to and across the City boundary, into the wheat fields,  then returning to the 3 Kings Café on the Fold for a buffet lunch and talk.  These estates were part of a huge redevelopment planned after the Second World War, the former meadowland and pasture recalled only by the names of the tower blocks  - Burdock, Heather, Lavender, Barberry, Saffron.

Poet Paul Conneally was on hand to assist the walkers compose haikus, which were later read out at the cafe. Paul had previously worked on 100 verses for 3 estates with Alec Finlay and Gavin Wade, producing 100 verses in 6 different places, providing a ‘tool for considering the future of the estates, its inhabitants, its identity, its visions’. Good weather -for a change - good company, good exercise and conversation. Some of the conversations turned to the recent death of Tony Wilson, who many saw as the promoter and progenitor of the regeneration of Manchester – an era has indeed passed. (See the articles posted at The Observer  by Paul Morley and on the Guardian arts blog by John Harris.) The artist project in Kings Norton will result in a publication, continuing this dialogue of change and renewal. Which reminds me, I have a few publications of my own to work on, so there’ll be more sitting than walking over the next few months…