Sensing London walking tour - Saturday 5 April 2025 10am
Regular price £19.50Join Open City for an ‘adventure of the optic nerve’ exploring how our sense of vision shapes our perception of London’s built environment
This walking tour — led by Golden Key Academy graduate Brandon Jackson — draws on neuroscience to offer participants a unique sensory journey through the capital where vision and perception are themselves put into question.
Throughout the tour, participants will embark on a guided experience where they are encouraged to move through spaces and focus their vision on their surroundings in new and unusual ways, rethinking how the built environment is perceived.
In our hurried London lives we all tend to disconnect from our surroundings. In this tour we will do the opposite of that. Together we will explore what French painter Pierre Bonnard called the "adventures of the optic nerve."
This walk teaches the art of moving mindfully through urban space – sensing the rhymes, rhythm, volumes, and voids that normally flow past unnoticed.
London is the perfect place for this perceptual adventure. It is an architectural collage with a mix of urban design patterns spanning millennia: from the intimate passageways of medieval London to gestures into the far distance reminiscent of the Acropolis.
As we move through some of the most powerful spaces in the city we will learn about how the brain turns light into space – and push our sensory capabilities to their limits.
Highlights of the route include: Inner Temple, Strand Aldwych, Somerset House, Air Street Arch and Burlington House.
Key information
Meet: Outside Tudor Street Gate, Middle Temple, EC4Y 0BH - meet on the corner of Tudor Street and Temple Avenue. (The 2nd stop on this tour is outside 6 Crown Office Row London EC4Y 7DR)
End: Outside the Royal Academy, Burlington House, Piccadilly W1J 0BD
Duration: 2.5 hrs approx
Distance: 2 miles approx
Route notes: There are steps in Inner Temple and can easily re-route if needed
Meet the tour guide…
Brandon Jackson is an artist whose practice investigates the intersections of painting, architecture, and perception. He can often be spotted on London's streets with his plein air painting easel capturing the play of light across the city's spaces.
His work is grounded in his academic training studying visual neuroscience at Yale University and the history of science at the University of Cambridge. He regularly gives talks on this subject, most recently at the University of Greenwich and MIT.
Jackson is a graduate of the 2023 Golden Key Academy — a masterclass for urban and architectural tour guiding run by Open City. He joined the Open City tours team in 2024.
Please select solidarity pricing if you feel you can help our charity to offer reduced concessionary tickets to others who require them.
We aim to be inclusive and accessible where possible, please contact Adrianna at tours@open-city.org.uk to discuss your accessibility needs, reduced ticket prices and if you require a free carer ticket.
Tickets are non-refundable and tours go ahead rain or shine.
* Please check for any planned transport engineering works, planned strike action or large scale events that may affect your journey before making your ticket purchase *
If you find you can no longer make the tour for any reason including Covid we are unable to transfer you to another date, but please feel free to pass your booked place onto a friend to go and enjoy the tour in your place.
In the event your tour date is cancelled you will be issued with a credit note (with no expiry date) that you can use to
- book onto a rescheduled date
- book onto any other tour from our programme
or you can request a refund.
All ticket purchases are in support of the work of our organisation including our pioneering education programmes. We really appreciate your support!
Get in touch with Adrianna at tours@open-city.org.uk with any queries.
