Cultural Geography Blog

Earth Percent  is an organisation that I heard about over the weekend at a Q and A with the Breton musician Yann Tiersen. EarthPercent invites artists and the music industry at large to donate a small percentage of their income, making change through organisations that meaningfully address the climate and nature crises. Over 250 artists and companies have already pledged their support. The idea is that nature is added as a collaborator / songwriter and therefore liable to receive royalties. These can then be spent on projects helping to protect nature.

A cross-posting from my GA Presidents blog. I was only due to be at the GA Conference for one day, which meant an early start for the drive over to Oxford from Norfolk. It's a real cross-country faff. Luckily I'd made some arrangements for parking which was easy enough to reach and close to the main social event of the trip. I was there for the Long Standing members meal . This is an annual lunch which is paid for by a previous member which allows those who are going along to the conference to meet up with former Presidents of the Association and network. Here's a picture taken at the restaurant where the meal was held. The food was delicious. There are quite a few former Presidents in the image. How many can you name? After that, it was a taxi up to Oxford Brookes University : the conference venue. I didn't plan to attend any sessions other than one... and I arrived too late for that one, but managed to speak to David Lambert who was presenting it. What I really wante...

I'm just back from the 2nd of my Easter trips: this time to Paris .  It was a great trip, a real highlight of which was the David Hockney 25 exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton . The building itself is stunning, designed by Frank Gehry and looking like the billowing sails of a galleon from the front. It's in the Bois de Boulogne, which is a Metro ride out from the centre: a lovely area. Hockney was there himself the day before we visited, which was the actual opening day of the exhibition. Room after room of Hockney over four floors. The building of the Fondation Louis Vuitton - some Snapseed treatment which has made the reflecting pool of water at the top of a cascade a different colour in an unexpected way. Bigger Trees Near Warter or/ou Peinture Sur Le Motif Pour Le Nouvel Age Post-Photograpique 2007, measuring 12m by 4.5m. Largest of Hockney’s paintings and made up of 50 smaller canvasses of a landscape near the East Yorkshire village of Warter. Here's a YouTube t...

Editor copies of my latest book project project - my 32nd book that I've been involved with - written by Becky Kitchen of the GA arrived this week.  They accompany the Student Book for iGCSE in the same series, and a Teacher Guide will be arriving shortly. The book costs £12.99

It's that time of year again for the launch of the Young Geographer of the Year category.  This annual competition is run by the Royal Geographical Society. The Young Geographer of the Year is the Society’s annual competition which recognises the outstanding work of the next generation of geographers. With its age ranges spanning the primary years to A Level, the competition encourages thoughtful and creative answers to the competition’s theme which is set each year. The Society encourages schools to run their own in-house competition and then send their top 10 entries into the international competition. The Young Geographer competition has been running for over 20 years and every year thousands of children across the world take part. 2025 competition The theme for the Young Geographer of the Year competition 2025 is: Understanding islands Let’s take a closer look at the World’s islands. It is estimated that our planet contains almost 670,000 islands, of which around 11,000 are p...

Last Sunday I went over to Norwich for a nice Sunday roast, and then to Norwich Castle. The long awaited keep restoration project has been delayed again and so it is still not open after around three years so far. I came across a piece which I hadn't seen before as it has been installed since my last visit, called 'An A-Z of Empire' by the Singh Twins that caught my eye. It's a light box with coloured panels offering an A-Z of Empire with some alternative facts and rhymes about places and events linked with colonialism. It would certainly make a talking point with groups. Here's a description from the Norfolk Museums service: The Singh Twins describe the concept of the jigsaw puzzle – a single image comprised of many separate but interlinked pieces – as symbolically representing the nature of colonial history as a global story; individual but interconnected narratives shaped by different experiences and viewpoints. The Singh Twins describe the purpose of the work a...