From April – July 2025 accompanied at different stages by various groups of friends and family, I walked the Via Francigena from the Great St Bernard Pass (Gran San Bernardo) in the Italian Alps, all the way down to the heel of the boot, Santa Maria di Leuca – raising funds and awareness for two fantastic charities one in the UK and one in Italy who use theatre and the arts to help and empower those affected by mental health.
Fundraising Completed
The Arcola Theatre, London
Arcola Mental Health Community Company uses theatre as a vehicle to tackle the stigmas surrounding mental health, a space where people with an interest in theatre and those who have experienced challenges with their mental health can come together as a community to connect and create.
Funds raised during the walk will culminate in the Arcola Mental Health Community Company performing their play as part of Arcola’s Participation Festival in March 2026.
Your money will help them provide a stable, long-term space for vulnerable adults to explore theatre and develop meaningful connections within their community, bringing in high quality guest practitioners to develop theatre making skills as well as helping to fund additional workshop resources and materials.
Nuova Aurora and the Crazy Talent Project, Florence
The Association Nuova Aurora for Mental Health strives to help families and individuals who suffer from mental health issues. We attempt to be the bridge that connects the community to the people in care at the Mental Health Centers and Day Care Centers in Florence.
Funds raised supported the ‘Crazy Talent’ project that oversaw a day of arts and theatre activities on 8th June at la Limonaia in Florence
We continue to support initiatives that promote mental health and wellbeing through theatre practice.
Losing Your Country to Find Your Feet
In the midst of life’s ordeals, we often say, ‘Just put one foot in front of the other.’ We think of a kindred spirit or soulmate as a ‘fellow traveller’. We talk of ‘walking alongside’ a friend in distress. When we exercise and deepen our skills to solve a baffling or intractable challenge, we speak of the ‘creative journey’ which leads us to profound illuminations, liberating shifts in our perception of ourselves and the world, inner growth and the release of new energies. We often describe our lives as an ‘unfolding path’.
“2025 marks my 33rd year in Italy, which I will celebrate by walking this wonderful country from top to bottom.”
Julia Holden
My own life has been defined by journeys – journeys of exile and discovery. My parents and grandparents fled to the UK as German-Jewish refugees from the Nazi persecution, and settled in Leicestershire, where I grew up. Imbued with a lifelong curiosity to explore other languages and cultures, I found myself travelling as a teenager and young adult to study and then to work in Germany, Brazil, Japan and eventually Italy, which has become my adopted homeland. Losing your country to find your feet. Mingling my English, German-Jewish genes with the rich soil of Italy has sprung a wonderful harvest of blessings – my Italian husband and Anglo-Italian children, a career in IP law that has taken me all over the world as ambassador for our Milan-based firm, and over the last 14 years, a second career as a theatre producer, collaborating with artists from all over the English-speaking world.
1300 years ago, from 725 AD, pilgrims began walking the route from Canterbury to Rome, which became known as the Via Francigena – the French or ‘Frankish’ Way – seeking inspiration, enlightenment, healing or pardon, seeking a change of life, a new direction. Pilgrimage is a stateless world, transcending borders, in which people of all faiths and none, people of all cultures and all ages are united by the road, by their destination – and by their tramping feet, their weary limbs and their blisters. Traditionally – and still today – pilgrims stay in havens or hostels known as rifugios or rifugii – places of hospitality, sanctuary, shelter, rest. Like migrants and refugees, pilgrims travel on foot, in all weathers, exposed to the hazards, encounters and serendipitous blessings of the road.
I love Eugene Ionesco’s definition of theatre as depaysement – literally, ‘losing your country’. We enter a new world in the theatre, in which the familiar is made strange and experienced as if for the first time. Losing your country to find your feet. We come to understand the cultures and experience of other peoples by hearing their stories. The best artistic works are usually the result of startling encounters with the new – when an artist is so galvanised by some new encounter, place or experience that it stirs or shakes up their creative gifts to bring forth startling new work. Or, in darker instances, where an individual is so haunted, tormented, angered or grief-struck by an experience that they are compelled to turn to creative expression as a way of sifting, exorcising, processing and coming to terms with their trauma – many of the greatest artistic works have been born from such encounters with the new. I love the maxim, Ambulando solvitur, attributed to St Augustine – it will be solved by walking. I also love the defiant boast or vow attributed to Hannibal, during his attempted conquest of Italy (over the Alps, with elephants), Aut viam inveniam aut faciam – I shall find a path – or make one.
Thank you for your generous support.
Julia
J. Productions 