Waypoint

Starting outside the P6 building on Abbeydale Road, Sheffield, this circular 11 mile walk takes around 7 hours, plus various stops you are encouraged to make. There are at least three easy opportunities for café stops.

It's a wellbeing walk based on the 5 Ways to Wellbeing. Each echo relates to one or more of these 5 Ways and you are invited to explore the surroundings at various points. This might mean stopping and creating something, noticing or sharing with someone else.

There's a .gpx file to guide you on the route.

This short clip outlines the 5 Ways to Wellbeing


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76Ueegt8NjI&feature=emb_logo&ab_channel=RecoveryCollegee-learningHub

Both Native Americans and Aboriginal people have used journey sticks as a visual map of the journeys they have been on. Collecting objects along the way, and tying them on in order, these sticks were then used to remember where they had been and helped them tell the story to their family and friends.
Why not  map your walk using a journey stick?

This is the site of the former Sheffield Art College which later became the Psalter Lane Campus of Sheffield Polytechnic. Sheffield College of Arts and Crafts moved from the city centre to this site in 1945. In 1978, the Art College hosted the first gig by The Human League. ABC also performed live for the first time at Psalter Lane. In 2008, graffiti artist and Hallam graduate, Kid Acne created an art work "You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone" over the entrance to the campus. Psalter Lane Campus closed on August 31 2008.


Notable students are:
Oreet Ashery, performance artist
John Hoyland 
David Mellor, Designer
Nick Park, creator of Wallace and Gromit
Nick Phillips, graphic designer
Tom Ravenscroft, DJ
Mr. Scruff, DJ
David Sheppard, musician, Brian Eno biographer

Connections through music binds us together. Find out what your partner's music taste is. If appropriate, ask a little deeper, what does this tell you about their values and beliefs?

This recording is Obama talking about hope and how important it is to absorb hardship that we can still insist we will prevail. This is when there's a depth to hope, when it's hard won.

After you've listened to the interview, bring to mind some of your own struggles and how getting through them has impacted on your hope for the future. What does this feel like? 

"Hopeful people experience better general health, including a longer lifespan and lower rates of cardiovascular disease, as well as greater achievement, increased determination and lower rates of depression. Hopeful thinking... has also been associated with higher pain tolerance and lower levels of depression in the chronically ill. Hope, then, acts as a protective mechanism while hopelessness can lead to physical, psychosocial and spiritual deficits."

https://www.wellbeing.com.au/mind-spirit/mind/holding-on-to-hope.html

As you walk up through the park, bring your attention to your walking and to your surroundings in this present moment. The audio will guide you through this process for a few minutes and you can continue afterwards if that suits you.

A Guided Walking Meditation from Jon Kabat-Zinn
https://soundcloud.com/mindfulmagazine/a-guided-walking-meditation-from-jon-kabat-zinn

The audio here is from the 2021 USA Presidential Inauguration of Biden.  Amanda Gorman recites her poem The Hill We Climb.

As you climb this hill listening to this speech, bring to mind all of people involved in your life. We each have connections to so many others who have helped us develop into the people we are now. And every day we depend on the actions of others in so many different ways. As you listen to the speech, take a few minutes to remember those many people who have had an impact on making you who you are.

The Hill We Climb.
When day comes, we ask ourselves where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry, a sea we must wade.
We’ve braved the belly of the beast.
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace,
and the norms and notions of what 'just' is isn’t always justice.
And yet, the dawn is ours before we knew it.
Somehow we do it.
Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken,
but simply unfinished.
We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.
'Never been more optimistic': speeches, songs and celebrations cap Biden's inauguration day – as it happened
And yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine,
but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect.
We are striving to forge our union with purpose.
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colours, characters, and conditions of man.
And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us.
We close the divide because we know, to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside.
We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another.
We seek harm to none and harmony for all.
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:
That even as we grieved, we grew.
That even as we hurt, we hoped.
That even as we tired, we tried.
That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious.
Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division.
Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree and no one shall make them afraid.
If we’re to live up to our own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made.
That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb, if only we dare.
It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit.
It’s the past we step into and how we repair it.
We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it.
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.
This effort very nearly succeeded.
But while democracy can be periodically delayed,
it can never be permanently defeated.
In this truth, in this faith, we trust,
for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us.
This is the era of just redemption.
We feared it at its inception.
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour,
but within it, we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves.
So while once we asked, ‘How could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?’ now we assert, ‘How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?’
We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be:
A country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free.
We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation.
Our blunders become their burdens.
But one thing is certain:
If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change, our children’s birthright.
So let us leave behind a country better than the one we were left.
With every breath from my bronze-pounded chest, we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one.
We will rise from the golden hills of the west.
We will rise from the wind-swept north-east where our forefathers first realized revolution.
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states.
We will rise from the sun-baked south.
We will rebuild, reconcile, and recover.
In every known nook of our nation, in every corner called our country,
our people, diverse and beautiful, will emerge, battered and beautiful.
When day comes, we step out of the shade, aflame and unafraid.
The new dawn blooms as we free it.
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.

Here’s an invitation to TAKE NOTICE, BE CREATIVE and GIVE TO OTHERS. We’ve called this Wellbeing activity The Great Big Art Exhibition. Antony Gormley, The Angel of the North sculptor, launched The Great Big Art Exhibition early in 2021 with the ambition to create a country-wide show of imagination and optimism, inspired by the rainbow images people made to celebrate the NHS and keyworkers during the first lockdown. 

This Wellbeing activity is inviting you to make an artwork at home and put in your window or garden for others to see. 

Listen to the BBC interview with Antony Gormley that follows and then collect some mud on your walk to take home for moulding into whatever creature comes out!

Details of how to take part, including a free activity pack, are available from arts organisation FirstSite.

What can you learn about motivation in times of oppression from Maya Angelou's poem "Still I Rise"?

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Maya Angelou, "Still I Rise" from And Still I Rise: A Book of Poems.  Copyright © 1978 by Maya Angelou.

Listen to the poem and then as you continue through the wood, notice how you are at this moment among these trees.


Amanda Palmer reads "When I Am Among the Trees" by Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

There is a fabulous brook running down through these woods. Find a spot, collect some stones and pebbles together to make a balancing stones sculpture. You'll need focus, patience, keenness of touch, an eye for drama. It might take a couple of minutes or an hour.

Jonna Jinton, Swedish artist and photographer, explains how she got into it. "The very first time I tried balancing stones was back in 2010. I saw some stone sculptures in a park, when an old, wise man told me that it was a symbol for the balance of nature. I liked that idea, and after that I started making easy stone sculptures. After a while, I started experimenting with balance and I tried to make stone sculptures that had such small balance points so that it almost would look impossible. I really loved that. 
Both because it felt like a challenge, but also because it forced me to get really still and quiet, and focus on one thing only; to find the tiny, tiny balance point. It more and more turned into some kind of meditation."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqU19dR0bFE&vl=en&ab_channel=JonnaJinton

As you wander the woods, focus on the objects around you. Notice sizes, shapes, colours, shades, contrasts, textures, reflections and dullness. Then collect some together and make a piece of land art that may last only hours or days. Take photos to remember and share it.

“Andy Goldsworthy is a British artist known for his site-specific installations involving natural materials and the passage of time. Working as both sculptor and photographer, Goldsworthy crafts his installations out of rocks, ice, leaves, or branches, cognizant that the landscape will change, then carefully documents the ephemeral collaborations with nature through photography. “It's not about art,” he has explained. “It's just about life and the need to understand that a lot of things in life do not last.”” (http://www.artnet.com/artists/andy-goldsworthy/)

Time to put a little spurt in your step? Or take it easy and savour the ambience walk? Enjoy the romp.

Gratitude contributes to our happiness and wellbeing. What have you noticed on this walk that you have been grateful for? Explain why you're grateful for these things to someone else.

P6 Sheffield - Forge Dam loop 11 miles 5 hrs

P6 Sheffield - Forge Dam loop 11 miles 5 hrs

14 ECHOES

DOWNLOAD OUR APP TO DISCOVER THIS TOUR AND MANY OTHERS.

The Echoes

What is the 5 Ways to Wellbeing?

NOTICE/CREATE/CONNECT: Journey stick

LEARN: The Psalter Lane Campus

CONNECT: Love of music

NOTICE/LEARN: Hope

Discover more geolocated content in our apps.

Are you a creator?

Get in touch

Echoes creative apps

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About us

P6 Sheffield - Forge Dam loop 11 miles 5 hrs

room 14 ECHOES

DOWNLOAD OUR APP TO DISCOVER THIS TOUR AND MANY OTHERS.

The Echoes

What is the 5 Ways to Wellbeing?

NOTICE/CREATE/CONNECT: Journey stick

LEARN: The Psalter Lane Campus

CONNECT: Love of music

NOTICE/LEARN: Hope

Discover more geolocated content in our apps.

Are you a creator?

Get in touch

Echoes creative apps

Echoes labs

About us

14 ECHOES