The School of Navigation is a series of walking classes that aims to discover navigational narratives that enrich and support wayfinding for ‘urban navigators’ with a poor sense of direction.

Navigation, as the practice of producing spatial knowledge, provides possibilities for the experience of urban environments to be reshaped through personal encounters offering various perspectives on the city. However, because our innate sense of orientation is increasingly restricted in urban environments by the use of time-saving e-maps, navigators are gradually losing their ability to build personal spatial relationships with these environments.

The School of Navigation provides a one-day walking class on navigational skills, practiced in Bloomsbury which poses as a live ‘classroom’. There are three phases to the class: 1) Introduction to navigational stories and the system of navigational skills at the school reception; 2) Exploration of four classrooms in Bloomsbury using a special map and eight navigational tools to discover personal interests in navigation; 3) Rebuilding of navigational identity through a personalised evaluation and certificate, for which we return to the school reception.