Way-Losing

Way-Losing is a performance in the form of a city tour which explores what it is to lose your way. 

Some people have a special talent for getting lost but for many of us we very rarely find ourselves not knowing where we are, particularly in our home city. Rather than viewing being lost as a negative thing, this tour considers it as a unique state of mind in which places, people and objects all appear new and detached from their familiar matrix. 

On a Way-Losing tour the group goes out and about and tries to deliberately get lost, for real, using a number of techniques that bring about a ‘lost’ state of mind. As such, a Way-Losing tour is guided by the ideas and poetics of losing ones way and it includes a lot of discussion and choices between the participants while they follow an indeterminate route through the city. The starting point is agreed and at the end of the walk the group returns, but where they go in between is determined by just how well they succeed in getting lost.

How a Way-Losing Tour Feels

The experience is one of slow excitement that comes from discovering the city in a new way. On every tour so far, all the participants finally reached a state of being lost, usually in their own city. Along the way the conversation is usually good as the type of people attracted to this are often like-minded, creative and interested in the city. People usually make new friends and once the tour is over the group often eats and/or shares a drink.

This is how participants have described it:

We absolutely enjoyed the Way losing experience… getting lost seems to be the best way to get to know an unknown city

I participated in Bill’s way losing tour and experienced that ‘Way Losing’ gave us so much, it could become addictive in a good way. The skills of Bill Aitchison as a ‘Way Losing Tour operator could be described as energetic, efficient and professional. To sum up, ‘Way losing is winning’

Way-Losing is a Bill Aitchison Company production that was first presented at  Still Walking Festival in Birmingham 2014 and has since been given in different forms in Beijing, London, Cologne, Brussels, Xiamen, Shenzhen, Yokohama, Oxfordshire and Santa Cruz de Tenerife.