The PORT project with Art Walk Projects, began during the pandemic in 2021 initially as an online forum for myself, Louise Barrington, Henna Asikainen, Rosy Naylor and Billie Penfold. We were invited to come together and share walking experiences relating to five separate locations: Holy Island; Scapa Beach, Orkney; Seafield, Edinburgh; Swalecliffe, near Whitstable, Kent; and the Lagoons, Musselburgh.

PORT slowly emerged over time around common approaches to walking, landscape edgelands, water pollution, climate migration and more. Our walking group presented a distanced walk during Art Walk Porty in 2021.

Guiding slow water walk, I invited participants in Portobello to walk and spend time, with and within the sea. Initiating the walk with an invitation to share stories of the sea and of water memories. We then walked together with low tide exploring forms harboured and homed by the sea. Meeting spoots and brittle stars along the shore line.

During Art Walk Porty in September 2022, we were brought together to create a collective walk along Portobello, connecting our respective places together through story and sharing of place.

We weaved our walk together, prompting discussions around place, belonging, the value of water, and our relationship with the natural environment. As part of the group exhibition at Art Walk Hub, we presented site-related artworks and close examinations of seawater samples from each of our locations.

Where the River Esk meets the Firth of Forth, there forms an ecotone between river and estuary that weaves its way by Musselburgh Lagoons. From a muddy foreshore to an ash tipping site, Musselburgh Lagoons now exist as a nesting and roosting ground for thousands of birds every year. In the midst of the climate crisis, for me, the site represents a hope for what is possible in a wounded landscape

Spending time within the site, I began to notice the eider duck and the golden ribbed melilot plant as symbols of place. The eider chicks make their way to the lagoons from Inchkeith Island every summer. This six-mile journey is the first one they take, arriving at the lagoons for refuge. Melilot scatters a yellow along the boundary of the lagoons. As a detoxifying plant, it tends to the soil from which it grows. Both plant and bird revealed their own ecological relation to the lagoons, unfolding a wider, layered story of place.

I was eager to acknowledge the plant and aerial biota as active community members of this landscape. Eider kite was created from hemp fabric, foraged marram grasses from Musselburgh’s shoreline and braided nettle rope from the Lagoons. I walked and flew Eider kite by the shoreline, watching as it wove a nettle line through the air. Melilot seed papers soaked in sandstone pigment were distributed to participants during our PORT walk. Both the kite and seeds, were my offerings of place.

The pace of this project was slow and accumulative. Sharing stories of our coastal-scapes through distanced walks allowed for a deeper understanding of our respective local ecologies to grow over time. Listening and braiding stories from both human and a non-human perspectives. We talked of hope and of action as methods in response as we navigate through the climate crisis.

While walking and sharing, a beautiful synergy arose from our stories, as we noted species who sequester within both soil and sea. Our quiet care-takers of the planet.