The Milena Principle is an international nomadic art platform, think tank, artistic fellowship, and project, founded in 2003 in Flanders by writer, performer, and curator Geert Vermeire; artist Stefaan van Biesen; art historian Filip Van de Velde; and photographer Annemie Mestdagh. It is an organization that brings together artists, students, and academics in a wide range of projects focused on art, climate, ecology, and society. Since 2005, it has been managed by the Van Biesen–Mestdagh Private Foundation.

The platform operates worldwide in the fields of walking art, sound art, locative media, ecological art, culture, and science, with the overarching aim of facilitating all forms of artistic and cultural expression. It collaborates with museums, universities, artist collectives, and festivals across Europe as well as North and South America.

The Milena Principle emerged as an open collective and a “dynamic constellation” of nomadic artists and researchers, inspired by the Renaissance, utopian thinking, and the Spaziergangswissenschaft (strollology) of Annemarie and Lucius Burckhardt.

Its projects are generally collaborative and site-specific, using walking as a relational, contemplative, and transformative practice through which landscapes are experienced, reimagined, and reshaped—both physically and mentally.

One of its central projects is The Dürer Connection, a European nomadic network that initiates collaboration between the public, experts, and artists. This project is inspired by the nomadic practices of Renaissance artists, scientists, and philosophers who travelled extensively throughout Europe, exchanged ideas, and connected with diverse communities. The activities of The Milena Principle span numerous countries, including Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Poland, Spain, Italy, the Czech Republic, Romania, Austria, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Greece, and Brazil.

Made of Walking is one of the key initiatives of The Milena Principle and brings together a global network of artists, writers, creatives, researchers, and educators. Since its inception in 2016, this nomadic gathering has focused on walking and healthy walking practices, facilitating dialogues between walking, performance, visual art, literature, and new media.

Each edition is curated by a duo or a curatorial group and takes place in remote, often challenging natural landscapes. These locations encourage participants to explore walking as an artistic practice while engaging with local communities. While Made of Walking places primary emphasis on the physical act of walking, it also integrates technological innovations within walking art. After organising multiple editions alternately focused on walking arts and sound walking, the initiative joined forces with The Walking Body in Guimarães from 2018 onward, the Prespa Walking Arts Encounters from 2019, and the Walking Arts and Relational Geographies encounters in Catalonia from 2022. Together with Sound Walk September—an initiative by Andrew Stuck that originated from Made of Walking in La Romieu, France—it folded into walk · listen · create. In this sense, walk · listen · create can be seen as the online counterpart to Made of Walking, functioning as a growing international community of practice.