26isfam160 10.3205/26isfam160 urn:nbn:de:0183-26isfam1602 Meeting Abstract Ellingsen Ellingsen Eric E

National Building Arts Center

author German Medical Science GMS Publishing House

Düsseldorf

610 20260612 engl This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Dieser Artikel ist ein Open-Access-Artikel und steht unter den Lizenzbedingungen der Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (Namensnennung). M0652 160 International Society for Arts and Medicine The Healing Arts – Forging Alliances of Arts & Medicine Poster Abstracts Berlin 20260618 20260620 26isfam160 TextBackground: This introduces a geospatial art-science method translating oral histories and embodied memories of home and neighborhood into walkable paths and hydrological gardens of healing. The approach is grounded in more than a decade of walking-based, participatory landscape research and university teaching, and extends the Mellon-funded Black HerStory Initiative, where I served as co-Principal Investigator designing city-wide interpretive trails, signage, and raingardens.Objectives: To demonstrate a living co-dependent art and science interdisciplinary multisensory research method linking art, poetry, public health, stormwater engineering, and memory preservation; and to initiate an international interdisciplinary walking-lab network.Methods: “Postholing method” from Stephen Sennet. Combined with the Method of Loci. Tested in collaboration with The Griot Museum of Black History, through “walkie-talkie” sessions with an elder whose life story reflects structural histories of landscape and housing inequity. The method is organized around three human “feet”:Body Feet—biometric gait, physical health, emotional patterningPoetic Feet—scansion, breath, rhythm, narrative meterArchitectural Feet—measurement, slope, hydrological designResults: Participants generated speculative walking-paths water-paths—micro-watersheds, raingarden sites, and bioretention corridors—linking personal memory to local hydrological opportunity and public-health considerations. In peer revied presentation of my research, medical researchers in the geo-spatial community speculated that this method could improve public health, possibly counteract Alzheimer’s, and express desire to work together. Curators and community partners continue to link experimental interest to research support.Conclusion: Walking becomes both preservation and prognosis: a tool for ecological repair, social connection, and community health through poetic artistic expression. 0 0 0 0