Pennine Street is a cartographic art experiment, twinning High Street 2012 in London with the Pennine Way, a long-distance footpath running between the Peak District and the Scottish Borders. 

The project involved three walks in April, May and June 2012.

The aim is to read this route as though it is the Pennine Way.  The walks are named Pennine Street Trespass in honour (and gentle parody) of the Kinder Trespass, held on 24th April 1932.  A large group of people converged at Kinder Scout, then an area of private land in the Pennines, withstanding assault (and assaulting in turn) by gamekeepers and subsequent imprisonment.  This event played an important role in bringing about changes in the law which now mean we can walk more freely on that land.

Today, as we still live in a capitalist context, land ownership and access are still live issues.  The Olympic site has caused controversy with its enormous impact on Stratford particularly and London more widely.  Part of this picture is the declaration of High Street 2012 as an artery for tourists to access the Olympic site and central London, with investment being ploughed into painting shopfronts and digging up grass while some of Europe’s most deprived communities live a few yards away.  High Street 2012 privileges capital above people, as does the whole Olympic project, because it is part of capital.

This walk aimed to offer a way of experiencing and critiquing the route, with an experiment in reading the route as though it were the Pennine Way.  At a number of points along the way readings were given from the Pennine Way guide book, as well as texts, chosen by participants, that bring up ideas that feel relevant to the context – political writing, literature and poetry, extracts from novels, websites and academic writing.