Saturday 22nd June 2013 11.45pm

Meet at Tate Modern, Turbine Hall entrance, Bankside, London SE1 9TG
Ends: Maudsley Hospital Denmark Hill, SE5 8AZ.

Join CoolTan Arts for a fun guided midnight walk – an exciting evening of summer solstice lunacy!

The walk will visit a number of local buildings with an unusual design or purpose and look at the mysterious psychological effects that these locations can have on people. There will be stops at the Marshalsea, where Charles Dickens’ father was imprisoned; the Heygate Estate, a huge neo-Brutalist estate currently being demolished; Camberwell House, a former asylum; and Cross Bones Cemetery, a disused post-Medieval burial ground that was once on unconsecrated graveyard for sex workers.

Saturday 18th May
Time: 11.30am-4.30pm
Place: Tate Modern (outside The Turbine Hall entrance), Bankside, London SE1 9TG
Cost: free/voluntary donation

Join CoolTan Arts Largactyl Shuffle for the May Day Walk, a guided, stigma-busting cultural walk, designed to encourage mental and physical wellbeing, through art, exercise, humour and history.

For May’s Largactyl Shuffle we will walk through green spaces to celebrate the origins of May Day and the arrival of  Spring. Learn about the folklore of traditional May Day celebrations, including the history of the Maypole and Jack in the Green, garland making and guerilla gardening.

A review by Tim Russell with Pictures …

The CoolTan Arts Largactyl Shuffle launched a new route on Saturday 20th April when we walked from Tate Modern to Bermondsey for the first time.
The weather was perfect as we gathered outside the gallery’s Turbine Hall and remained hot and sunny throughout the afternoon.

Our first talk after leaving Bankside was at Red Cross Gardens, a newly restored community garden, which was originally laid out by the social reformer Octavia Hill in 1887, before we made our way to Long Lane. This was the scene of the battle of Bermondsey, when local residents held a huge anti-fascist demonstration, stopping Mosley’s blackshirts from marching through the area in 1937.

Saturday April 20th
Time: 11.30am – 4.30pm
Place: Tate Modern (outside The Turbine Hall entrance), Bankside, London SE1 9TG
Cost: free/voluntary donation

Join CoolTan Arts Largactyl Shuffle for the Bermondsey walk, a guided, stigma-busting cultural walk, designed to encourage mental and physical wellbeing, through art, exercise, humour and history.
For April’s Largactyl Shuffle we will walk from Tate Modern to Bermondsey to explore the heritage of this intriguing area of Southwark. Please join us to hear talks on the history, development and the modification of Bermondsey in relation to the arts, mental health and social history.

To celebrate International Women’s Day the Largactyl Shuffle ran a walk on Revolutionary Women on Saturday 16th March.
We walked to Ruskin Park to hear about Phyllis Pearsall who, after leaving home age 14 and sleeping rough in Paris, wrote the London A-Z!!

Walking on, we went through the back streets of Camberwell to Myatts Fields where we were welcomed with an interesting talk on the origins of the park, cottage gardening and their self-sufficient Cafe. We rested with coffee and cakes in their round house – a circular glass building overlooking the park on all sides.

Saturday 16th March
Start: Maudsley Hospital, Denmark Hill, SE5 8AZ
Ends: Feminist Library, SE1 7XW
Times: 11:30 – 4:30pm
Cost: free/voluntary donation

Join CoolTan Arts Largactyl Shuffle for the ‘Revolutionary Women Walk’, a guided, stigma-busting cultural walk, designed to celebrate International Women’s Day and encourage mental and physical wellbeing, through art, exercise, humour and history.
The walk will lead us through Ruskin Park and Myatts Fields and across boroughs for talks on local suffragettes and revolutionary women from Southwark and Lambeth.

We will be stopping for short talks on the suffragette and Britain’s first professional landscape gardener, Fanny Wilkinson; the writer, philosopher and advocate for women’s rights, Mary Wollstonecraft; and Alice Chapin, a suffragette who poured chemicals into ballot boxes to disrupt a Southwark by-election.There will also be talks on Olive Morris, who set up the Brixton Black Women’s Group, and two pioneering nurses, Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole.

February is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History Month, and what better way to celebrate this at CoolTan Arts than by making it the focus of February’s Largactyl Shuffle stigma-busting walk!
After meeting outside the Maudsley Hospital we set off at a leisurely pace towards our first stop at Camberwell Green, where we enjoyed some word-play with Polari, a form of slang used extensively in the gay community while homosexuality was still illegal in Great Britain.

Next up we stopped in front of the Magistrate’s Court for an enlightening talk from Estera on the trial of Oscar Wilde and the shifting attitudes towards homosexuality during his life and in the years since his death.

On Saturday 19th January CoolTan Arts held the Largactyl Shuffle Health Walk.
January walks are walks with no talks. They typify the month of January concentrating on the Largactyl call ‘to come out of the house, join us for a walk and get fit on the way’!!

We were a small dedicated group of new volunteers and Andrew, our Largactyl photographer. To keep warm we marched on, cutting across the west of Camberwell in snow covered streets to our first destination of Myatt’s Fields. We arrived in a snow storm and stopped for coffees in the Victorian band stand.

Date: Saturday 16th February 2013
Starting: Maudsley Hospital, Denmark Hill, London SE5 8AZ
Finishing: Cross Bones Cemetery
Times: 12noon – 4:30pm
Cost: free/voluntary donation

Join CoolTan Arts Largactyl Shuffle for the LGBT history walk, a guided, stigma-busting cultural walk, designed to encourage mental and physical wellbeing, through art, exercise, humour and history.

En route we will stop for short talks celebrating past and contemporary LGBT locals, including a talk by human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell. We will also learn about famous Southwark LGBT artistes and the life of Oscar Wilde, explore the relationship between Mental Health and the LGBT community, and much more!

To raise awareness of the issues surrounding mental health diagnosis, CoolTan Arts marked World Mental Health Day with our annual Largactyl Shuffle Sponsored Walk on 13th October. The walk is our biggest yearly event and covers the 4.8 miles between Maudsley Hospital and Tate Modern. This year we explored the idea of BRANDED – how labels and branding can create stigma against those with mental distress.

Here are some photos of the event:

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On Saturday 18th August, the Community Legacy Walks project and CoolTan Arts Largactyl Shuffle joined forces to run the Games Walk, from Hackney Museum to Victoria Park. Here are some images from the day. Check back soon for a full review.

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Photo Credit: Jez C Self

Saturday 21st July
Start: Maudsley Hospital, Denmark Hill, SE5 8AZ
Ends: Dickens Gardens
Times: 12noon – 4:30pm
Cost: free/voluntary donation

Join CoolTan Arts on the Largactyl Shuffle alternative Dickens Walk, a guided walk from Maudsley Hospital to Dickens Square,SE1, where we aim to uncover some of the lesser-known facts about Britain’s most celebrated novelist in this important year of his bicentenary!

Along the 3 mile route our friendly guides lead you on a journey exploring the local history and landmarks of Southwark and their connection to Dickens life and novels.

Walk with us to find out about Dickens’s hidden links to central Southwark , 19^th Century mental health services and the grand local institutions of Camberwell and Peckham houses!

To celebrate the Summer Solstice the Largactyl Shuffle met on the 23rd June to do a midnight walk from Tate Modern to Maudsley Hospital in Denmark Hill.

On the evening about 30 of us assembled under the rain which is becoming a bit of a hallmark of Largactyl walks this year!

Here are some photos from the walk …

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Setting off with umbrellas and waterproofs our first stop on the route was on Southwark bridge road to hear about different types of night workers and the challenges they face.

We then stopped at the gates of the Crossbones Cemetery on Redcross Way, the unconsecrated burial site and memorial to sex workers.

Saturday 23rd June 2012, 11.45pm
Meet at Tate Modern, Turbine Hall entrance, Bankside, London SE1 9TG
Ends: Maudsley Hospital Denmark Hill, SE5 8AZ

Join CoolTan Arts for a guided Summer Solstice Midnight walk- an exciting evening of summer madness and discovery.

Explore the urban psychogeography of South London and learn about local history and familiar landmarks in a light you have never seen them before.

Participate in this unique procession from the Tate Modern to the home of contemporary psychiatry, the Maudsley Hospital. On the way make new friends, learn more about famous night walkers, Charles Dickens, lunacy, and the Solstice.

Our May Day Largactyl Shuffle, in celebration of the coming of summer, was met with an overcast sky.
However, we gathered at Tate Modern to clad ourselves in flora and bells in tribute to some of the 1st of May traditions in the borough of Southwark. We set off through the streets, led by the May Queen whom we carried, coming to a stop at Quilp Street Gardens. We listened to tales of the Green Man (jack of the green) and sang ‘Now is the month of Maying’, kept in tune by a youtube recording.

Date: Saturday 19th May
Start: Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG – main entrance outside the Turbine Hall
Ends: Camberwell Green
Times: 12noon – 4:30pm
Cost: free/voluntary donation

Join CoolTan Arts Largactyl Shuffle, a free guided cultural walk around Southwark, promoting mental health and physical wellbeing, using art, humour and history and de-stigmatising mental distress.

This month will be an exploration of the origins of May Day and a celebration of the return of spring. Learn more about the history of the ancient festival and its connection to Southwark. Learn about Walworth May Queens, the Bermondsey Maypole, Morris dancers, Jack in the Green, Sid Barrett, Folk songs and much more!

The Largactyl Shuffle Arts & Crafts Walk took place on April 21st. The group walked from the Maudsley Hospital to Dickens Gardens.

On a bright but cloudy morning, 15 of us assembled outside the Maudsley Hospital for our Largactyl Shuffle on the theme of Arts and Crafts. First stop was the sunny bandstand in Ruskin Park, where we heard about John Ruskin and also about art therapy, and did a bit of drawing to express how we were feeling today. Then we made our way through side streets and parks to the South London Art Gallery, where there is a famous floor by Walter Crane.

Saturday 21st April 2012
Starting: Maudsley Hospital, Denmark Hill, SE5 8AZ
Times: 12noon – 4:30pm
Cost: free/voluntary donation

Join CoolTan Arts Largactyl Shuffle, a free guided cultural walk around Southwark, promoting mental health and physical wellbeing, using art, humour and history and de-stigmatising mental distress.

This month’s walk will be an exploration of Arts and Crafts through Southwark’s streets and green spaces, ending at Dickens Gardens.

Learn about the many different guises of Arts and Crafts throughout the ages  from high art to domestic art – from therapy in institutions to a medium of social activism.

To celebrate International Women’s Day the Largactyl Shuffle met on March 19th to walk from The Maudsley Hospital to The Cross Bones Cemetery in Borough.

It began with another day of rain!! But we marched on, stopping at the Institute of Psychiatry to hear about Sylvia Plath and The Bell Jar. Moving on to Camberwell Green, at our very own Gingko tree we learned more about Bella Davis ‘The Queen of Ragtime Singers’ who sung at the Camberwell Palace of Varieties – now Nandos! Una Marson was also celebrated as another heroine of Camberwell. Una was a Jamaican feminist, secretary of The League of Coloured People and first black female broadcaster.

Saturday 17th March
Starting: Maudsley Hospital, Denmark Hill, SE5 8AZ
Times: 12noon – 4:30pm
Cost: free/voluntary donation

Join us to celebrate International Women’s Day and hear about Revolutionary women in Southwark and beyond. We will be walking from Maudsley Hospital to Crossbones Cemetery, the historical final resting place for local ‘single women’ – a euphemism for sex workers, many of whom died from the dangers of their work. Learn about local unsung heroines, creative women and Mental Health and how Herstory was made by protesting Women in Southwark and beyond.

Unite with us in revolutionary song! Everybody welcome!

Please meet outside the main entrance to The Maudsley Hospital, Denmark Hill, SE5 at 11.30am.