THE 
SKY
ABOVE

Concept, Text and Design by Nikhil Vyas

Voiced by Lorna Treen and Jonathan Oldfield

With thanks to Nancy Roberts, Alexandrina Hemsley and Saffron Mustafa

I hope you’re holding up OK.

Think of the last walk you’ve been on. Not a journey to the post office, not a trip to pick up some extra masks, not a nip over to the chippy, not all the other things a walk can hide behind.

Think of your last walk.

If you’re like me, then it might have been quite recent. Your walks might have become one of the few tethers of certainty in your days these past few months. It might have been that way for longer. And if you’re like me, your walks might involve a city.

You might be getting tired of your walks. Of how the same streets and same houses and same trees and same road signs repeat themselves until they are identical. Of how a walk has become a way of killing time until the next thing you need to do.

Cities are like jazz: rhythms building on rhythms, towns building on towns, demanding that you step in time. And the rhythms of the city have slowly crept into the rhythms of our walks. Walk to brainstorm. Walk to make a call. Walk for serotonin. Walk to improve your productivity. Walk to clear some space in your mind that can then be filled with more work, better work, harder work. Even for those of us living at the edge of or beyond the physical reach of the city, this rhythm carries further than you might expect.

The Sky Above is a walk through a city, a town, or anywhere else that you might call an urban area. It’s an attempt to notice a different rhythm, to notice an escape route, to notice the city anew.

HELLO.

The Sky Above is an instruction-based activity for one audience member at a time, which takes place during a walk through an urban space. It can vary in length of time, but a suggestion would be to take between 30 minutes to 1 hour.

You will have a pack of cards. Each card contains a different instruction. There are four differently coloured sets in the pack.
There are many different ways to take part in The Sky Above. Here is one suggestion for how.

1. Split the entire set of cards into the different colours. Shuffle each set.
2. Pick three cards from the Red set of cards, then three from the Blue set, then three from the Green set, then one from the Black set. These cards will be the instructions you take with you on your walk.
3. Decide where your walk will begin. This could be from your front door. This could be somewhere you have never set foot in before. This could be somewhere between those two.
4. Decide what you will wear for your walk. Will it rain? Will it be too warm for a jumper? Will you wear a skirt, or a pair of tracksuit bottoms, or a cap that you’ve never worn before? What shoes will you wear? Decide also what you will bring with you. Or whether you need to bring anything at all. The only items you must bring are your ten selected cards. You’ll also need a phone and earphones to scan the cards from the Black set. They have QR codes with links to audio that you can listen to as you walk.
5. Put your ten chosen cards in your pocket, or another easy-to-reach place. Once you arrive at your chosen starting point, The Sky Above begins.
6. Start by taking a card at random, from your pocket. Read the instruction on the card and try to follow it for as long as it instructs, or as long as you feel is worthwhile.
7. Once you are ready, put that card away, and take out the next card. Again, try to follow it. Work your way through the cards until they are finished.
8. The Sky Above ends once the cards are finished, or once you get home, or at some other point.

HOW TO PLAY.

INTRODUCTION + METHOD

RECEIVE THE SKY ABOVE BY POST.

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