Explore cultural heritage with Go Walkeez!

Let’s go for a walk to sniff, snap and show us your interesting finds from your walk.

Go Walkeez is a family friendly interactive cultural engagement project. Using the physical toy dog as a hook, it is designed to promote family conversation and visual image making. The waggy tailed Go Walkeez dogs make their appearances at museums and other cultural heritage site for families to borrow for a ‘culture walk’. Each dog comes with a ‘cultural sniffie check list’ to inspire families to observe with more focus and intent. What makes the experience come alive is the integrated use of a mobile device camera to help families document their finds and relay their experience to museum through photographs.

Go Walkeez has worked in collaboration with museums and other cultural heritage sites and institutions to promote family friendly and inclusive ‘cultural sniffing tour’.

Why is this important? Well, for one, Go Walkeez gives children a stronger sense of agency and participation in the meaning making process. Two, the photo documentation helps communicate what and how families are interpreting cultural materials. Three, its design creates a space for family collaboration (the dogs are too hard to hold and photo by the child, so others have to also help and muck in on the fun). Go Walkeez is a unique and powerful communication and research tool that makes heritage engagement fun, social and inclusive. It helps get the big people in big places see what is truly important in life from your perspective.

So, let’s Go Walkeez!

My doggie walker found this abstract blue sculpture for us as its shape was unique and wanted to find out more

About the project

Go Walkeez is a child-centered and family-friendly way to make heritage engagement fun for the whole family. It involves taking a toy dog for a ‘culture walk’ and taking pictures as you go along spotting objects that spark interest. It is a project to nurture shared experiences between children and adults through a fun, interactive and collaborative experience. Currently, Go Walkeez! is ran as a workshop-style experience in collaboration with museums and other heritage institutions.

The project was inspired by our belief that heritage plays an important role in informing us our individual and shared values. We feel that heritage has a genuine potential to enhance our lives and provide us with the emotional and intellectual anchor to help shape our world-views, adopt new ways of thinking, and mediate our differences. Sustaining cultural heritage is no easy task. We want everyone from each generation to help nurture an active conversation and commitment to its preservation, promotion and protection.

The award-winning heritage project helps engage and foster a new generation of heritage tribes.

Since 2016, the project has become part of a PhD project at the Norwich University of the Arts. The PhD explores family learning in art museums using object based learning and digital experience learning through visitor photography and conversation analysis.

For more information, please contact Kazz.

 Awards and events

Awards

RSA-Howarth Award

Royal Society of the Arts, Student Design Award 2015

Brainchild Creative Business Award 2015

Deutsche Bank Award for Creative Enterprise 2015 (Shortlisted)

Showcasing, workshops and Public Talks

(Go Walkeez dogs are currently taking a rest after years of hard work)

April 2020: Museum and Heritage Show 2020 session (covid impacted virtual show); Slanguage, ‘Chop it up’ Instagram live, Los Angeles

Feb 2019: SHARE Museums East annual conference

Sept 2018: GEM annual conference

August 2018: MOA Museum, Atami, Japan (one-week artist residency)

June 2018: Maverick City Symposium 2018, Liverpool

May 2018: Chiba Municipal Art Museum

August 2017: Royal Geographic Society Annual Conference (Creative Technologies and Cities)

April 2017: Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, as part of CA2RE International Conference

March 2017: Future of Religious Heritage (March issue feature article)

September 2016: Norwich Cathedral

May 2016: Norwich University of the Arts

March 2016 RSA-Engage: Edinburgh

March 2016 RSA-Engage: Cambridge

December 2015 Hot-Source Innovation Forum

December 2015 BEPE (Built Environment Professional Education) Reception

Nov 2015  RSA-RDI Diploma Presentation (showcasing at the RDI Diploma presentation evening)

Oct 2015  New Anglia iExpo 2015 Innovation Event

June 2015  RSA Engage London: Design for Good Student Award 2015 (lightening talk)