Terminalia is the ancient Roman festival in honour of the god Terminus, who presides over boundaries to be walked, celebrated and acknowledged once a year.
The annual Festival of Terminalia takes place on and around 23rd February. Set up by Tim Waters and the Leeds Psychogeography group, there are events happening across the world each February.
https://terminaliafestival.org/
Terminalia was an ancient Roman festival in honour of the god Terminus, who presided over boundaries. His statue was a stone or post stuck in the ground to distinguish between properties. Terminalia was traditionally celebrated on the last day of the old Roman year, which was February.
Places are defined by borders and boundaries, what's there and what isn't. The Festival of Terminalia is about celebrating these boundaries and borders. There is a different theme each year.
On the website Tim writes:
Psychogeography is basically how places make you feel. Places are defined by borders and boundaries, what's there and what isn't. Psychogeography is also about transforming the places where we live. It's about experiencing the urban environment in other ways. It's a reaction against the prescribed, officially allowed uses of places - that of consumption, entertainment, transit, habitation. It seeks towards a transformation of the everyday. It offers a critique of urban planning. It is a form of play. It's the poetry of place. It's the effect of an area on your emotions and thoughts.
By doing psychogeography, by walking across places and spaces in a different way, we may learn three new things: About the places themselves, about ourselves and how we relate to these particular spaces, and about space and place in general with possibly seeing a glimmer of whats really going on there.
If ever there was an ancient feast day of psychogeography Terminalia would be it!. The Festival of Terminalia has therefore been adapted and transformed! It is about the boundaries and borders, real, historical, symbolic and imagined. Places of beginnings, endings and thresholds.
You will find my Terminalia walk posts here on my website for each year starting from 2020 when I became involved with this in international project. Wherever I have been on or around February 23rd I have set up a terminalia walk with friends, occasionally on my own. (The 2025 walk post is mistakenly posted on the Blog pages - I will be moving it to the projects page).
See https://janette-kerr-temp.squarespace.com/config/pages/661727f9afafe654ae916b16