How The Art Walks Started
July 29, 2009 - © David Newton

Origin Of The Walks – the early 90’s in Melbourne
While I was always fond of going to the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne I didn’t know much beyond that reference point. In the 1990’s I was influenced by three main occasions that gave birth to the idea of doing art walks.

Back in 1993 I was seeing a lady who was a successful artist and she took me around to many art galleries in Melbourne on a regular basis. This was fun and I took an interest in the map she had with dots all over it marking art galleries. We went to a lot of them on afternoons together.

The following year in 94, I was met an art teacher – once again we went to many art galleries in the city of Melbourne together and she taught me things about what was on display. Her perspective was always interesting and took away misconceptions I had about galleries and artworks.

Then in 1995, just a couple of weeks after moving to Sydney I was out one afternoon with a social group and we spent 4 hours seeing art galleries in Woollahra and Paddington. My legs were sore! But I did have a good time. Again, the organizers had a little map with dots on it of all the places to visit. And we must have gone to about two thirds of them. It was a very interesting afternoon and I met some nice new people and made new friends at the walk that afternoon.

The idea of this walk was always kicking around in my head for many years until late 2002 when I thought of it as an idea to add to my social events I was conducting around that time. However, it wasn’t until late 2003 after I had moved back to Melbourne again that I put into place my first walk.

My First Art Walk
It almost didn’t start, we had a hot day on the day I began the walk and already several people who booked rang me to cancell – I was beginning to think it wasn’t going to work. Then when we did start I had a small group of about 8 people and our first gallery had an owner who talked on and on to my group he was great, but my walk was beginning to lag behind time as I feared no other gallery in the area would match this guy’s knowledge and they would get bored. Gee .. well not to worry several other galleries were helpful and my walks got a start. In fact the first year or two of doing walks a lot of the gallery owners thought my groups were a laugh.

My art walks extended to other parts of Melbourne such as Richmond, South Yarra, Carlton, St Kilda and Docklands and many others. It was a great experience and as a result the walks eventually attracted a write up in The Age newspaper in 2006. At that time my newsletter list grew at a rapid rate and I had to create Scenic Walks (see my scenic walks story on this page) to balance out my portfolio of walks on offer.

Since I was thinking of moving to Sydney anyway, I passed my walks over to an old mate of mine called Jeff who now manages the walks in his own right for the Melbourne area since February 2007.

Sydney Art Walks
Tentatively I began walks in Sydney at The Rocks – my first walk was on the second weekend of moving back to Sydney and thus my numbers were small but well received. During most of 2007 I was flying back and forth between Brisbane and Sydney as a mate of mine was running a café in Spring Hill so I was helping out and flying back to Sydney to do my walks on alternate weekends. It was hard going trying to do all these things and balance out my results.

Between al this time I’ve managed to start a small art walks group in Brisbane too. This is still a work in progress for me at this point. During mid 2008 after a break of about 6 months I began my walks again in Sydney and now that I’m back living in Sydney it’s made possible creating newer walks and events for the ever growing group.

The walks are still in the making with currently over a dozen art walks on the schedule during the year. However many more new walks tours are being added and we have some exciting walks yet to be birthed onto our events calendar for you. Please make sure you join our mailing list to be ahead of what’s going on. We also have scenic walks – social dinners, plus a host of different events to help you learn and network with others of like mind here in Sydney.


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