Set up specifically as a page for Walk.Listen.Create

BBC write up of Colston’s Last Journey

Feedback (currently from launch)

See HOME for a description of Colston’s Last Journey, a work of perambulatory soundart layered over Bristol (UK) city centre whose theme is Bristol and the Transatlantic Trafficking of Enslaved Africans. Colston’s Last Journey is not an historical guide, but an attempt to make walking art out of the inconceivable, at which it will undoubtedly fail. However.

Colston’s Last Journey (Worldwide) – plays anywhere in the world. See FURTHER INFORMATION (NOTE: the ‘publisher’ – SatsymphQR – which hosts the soundscape is available for iPhone worldwide and for Google playstores in Czechia, France (and 11 French territories), Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal Spain and the UK. If it is not yet available in your country please be patient and come back – we’re working on it!)

COLSTON’S LAST JOURNEY WENT LIVE ON 24 AUGUST 2023 AS A SELF-GUIDED SOUNDWALK. THE ‘LAUNCH EVENT’ WITH ARTIST-LED WALK-THRUS WAS AS PART OF THE BRISTOL FESTIVAL OF THE FUTURE CITY ON 17 OCTOBER 2023. MORE OF THESE WALK-THRUS ARE IN THE PLANNING. THE EXPERIENCE IS AVAILABLE FOR THE FORSEEABLE FUTURE (NOT TIME-LIMITED)

2 artist-led walk-thru’s were held on 17 October. 22 people booked, 17 actually turned up. 200 leaflets were handed out on the day to the public, my two helpers (we were all wearing branded ‘Colston’s Last Journey’ T-Shirts) also helping people with the tech and engaging passersby in explanations of the project. A further walk was held on the 18th as part of Black History Month for fellow residents of the Pervasive Studio Bristol. Most participants filled out feedback forms or talked about their experience (see FEEDBACK for comments).

Important to realize that the launch was just the start. I am lining up/talking to different groups to invite them to group walk thrus. These include contacts within Bristol City Council (The Legacy Group), the Bristol History Commission, students from the University of the West of England, the University of Bristol, the Red Lodge, Bristol. I am also implementing my marketing consultant’s marketing strategy to reach the largest possible audience world-wide.

For the self-guided experience you can from now download it from the App Store (for iPhone) and on Google Play for Android (otherwise search ‘Colston’ or ‘Colston’s Last JourneyI Note: the Android version may take a bit of scrolling to find for now!).

Please note there is well over 3 hours of content. Immersing yourself in the soundart (whilst wandering through Bristol city centre, down to the Cascade at the head of Broad Quay, then along the left hand side of the key, to Pero’s Bridge – named after an enslaved African servant in the late 18th century named Pero Jones – over Pero’s Bridge, then to the denouement at the site where the Colston statue was flung into the floating harbour on 7 June 2020) is crucial to understanding this many-facetted work of art, of which the following extracts can only give a flavour. It repays effort!