Our public survey showed that more people walked during COVID-19, and walked more frequently. However, some people walked less, or their walking reduced over the various lockdowns. Many barriers or challenges to walking were identified by respondents. We have commissioned 30 artists from across the UK to contribute recipes to The Walkbook which address one or more of these research challenges including: bad weather, bored of walking, shielding, anxious, lack confidence, excluded, in pain, nowhere to walk, bored of walking the same route, cannot walk very far, frightened, lack time, can’t be bothered, isolated. We hope that The Walkbook provides people – individuals and groups – with inspiration to walk, and to keep on walking.

The words in this journal edition are now fixed flat on the page but the worlds of words encountered in this edition are any thing but fixed. In this edition the 'words fly away' (Webb; italics in original). As Claire MacDonald reminds us writing is not transparent -in these articles words work. Words construct meaning. Words are provisional, contested and slippery. The authors craft their texts through and across creative and critical realms. The aesthetic of performance writing is writ large.This edition emerged from an international performance symposium at York St John University entitled 'Writing Encounters' (see details below). The journal edition includes a complex and rich array of encounters with books, domes, animals and formulations of time. As well as this we encounter writing as an encounter in its own terms. Together these articles celebrate the performative possibilities of writing.The symposium hosted by York St John University reflected themes of the international territories of writing in performance. There is a reciprocal relationship between university education and public performance practice where the term 'performance' animates a range of 'art and cultural practices and exists in dialogue with art forms that use live performance as their medium' (MacDonald 2005: 154). Many undergraduate students who study performance practice explore the notion of writing as making, composing, scoring, performing, reflecting and theorizing. In performance departments where students study contemporary theatre, they may often experience performance writing under the title of devising or making practices. This is not to suggest that the term 'devising' is an alternative name for writing; there are complex epistemological and cultural differences between writing and devising, namely the traditional understanding that writing belongs to one specific author whereas the term 'devising' is often experienced as shared or collaborative effort through improvisation, or writing collectively. But there are similarities that are often shared as a language across institutions and within the contemporary culture of performance makers.Perhaps a good example of writing in contemporary performance would be when texts are written in real time throughout the duration of the live event, which may also be accompanied by a visual performance score (variable according to which art form). Three of the articles in this edition (Webb, Wilsmore and Marcalo) explore and problematize notions JWCP_2.1_edt_Claire Hind_5-14.indd 5 JWCP_2.1_edt_Claire Hind_5-14.indd 5 7/20/09 11:41:43 AM 7/20/09 11:41:43 AM

Their work is relevant to the articles included in this edition. They argue that it is impossible to construct a concept of self without doing so in relation to certain constructions of other. In the interests of reflexivity Fine and Weiss urge us to consider the nature of the gap between self and other. They refer to the hyphen between self:other and they discuss the implications

Research at York St John (RaY) is an institutional repository. It supports the principles of open access by making the research outputs of the University available in digital form.

York/NEW YORK A performance installation featured at the Writing Encounters symposium at York St John University, September 2008