Cultural Geography Blog

Update Thanks to those colleagues who helped. I'm proud to have been a UCL-IOE   Fawcett Fellow for this academic year, working with others to explore curriculum thinking and epistemic quality in the curriculum. In 1987 Edith Fawcett endowed annual Fellowships in the Department of Geography at UCL in memory of her father, Professor C B Fawcett, who was head of the department between 1928 and 1949. The Fellowships were originally designed to enable UK-based teachers and other professional geographers in mid-career to spend a sabbatical term studying at UCL. The teaching Fellows continued to be paid their full salary and the scheme funded replacement geography teaching. This has now been opened up to a second model, where regular meetings are held across a year.  This year's group of fellows has had regular meetings at UCL, and discussions about curriculum, curriculum making and the influences which shape our professional practice. We have been discussing our decisions over wha...

Are they constructive or destructive waves?

Discovered over on Instagram. Daisuke Semejima paints 360 spherical art and in the words of their bio: I create works that change the perspective of everyday landscapes 途中経過をたくさん見て頂いた作品完成しました。 手で回転させてる動画でどうぞ！ 『Flatball 2022 No.04』 これも個展に出します！ pic.twitter.com/jrWKI2pJOY — 鮫島大輔/DaisukeSamejima (@samejimadaisuke) January 7, 2023 Check out the gallery on the website. Some more examples here too , which reinforces the link with the quotidian: "The paintings convey a sense of familiarity, offering an outsider’s view of the commonplace existence of Japanese suburbia."

  There are a number of foods which have a protected geographical designation of origin status, such as Arbroath Smokies and Parma Ham. Icelandic Lamb has just gone through the process of achieving protected status. In March 2023, this message went up on the website: ‘Íslenskt lambakjöt' is the name given to the meat from pure bred Icelandic lambs, which have been born, raised and slaughtered on the island of Iceland. Sheep farming has a long and rich cultural tradition in Iceland. The characteristics of ‘Íslenskt lambakjöt' first and foremost consists of a high degree of tenderness and gamey taste, due to the fact that lambs roam freely in demarcated wild rangelands and grow in the wild, natural surroundings of Iceland, where they feed on grass and other plants. The long tradition of sheep farming passing down generations on the island has led to high standards of flock management and grazing methods.  One of the best examples of traditional Icelandic cooking is lamb meat sou...

More to come on this over on LivingGeography later this month,  but the first few minutes of the extract that Mike Oldfield had produced for Tubular Bells 4 (to mark the 50th anniversary of the original) has been put up on YouTube and streaming music services.  The full extract will be part of the 50th anniversary re-release of the album, released to coincide with the anniversary. After producing this extract for the record company as a taster, Oldfield hung up his guitars and announced his retirement, so we will never hear the final album. This is preferable for me to bands who continue to go on long after they should have finished, naming no names. And here's a piece from 1984: one of my favourites, remastered... I still remember playing this in 1984ish by a glacial lake in Norway in the sunshine... one of those lifelong memories.

  Very much looking forward to this... Out in November...

  "The world reveals itself to those who walk" Werner Herzog This new film starring the excellent Jim Broadbent is getting a lot of interest and has also been picked up by the Ordnance Survey and others because of its themes related to the importance of walking. Celebrating walking and being outdoors, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry was shot sequentially on location. It mirrors the journey from Kingsbridge to Berwick-Upon-Tweed! Are you visiting any of the places on Harold's route this weekend? #HaroldFryFilm @HaroldFryFilm https://t.co/tL48LWRW8O — OS Leisure (@OSleisure) April 28, 2023 For me, the story has resonances with the context behind Raynor Winn's 'The Salt Path' but also a much earlier book I have a rare copy of which is Werner Herzog's 'Of Walking in Ice'. This explores a three week long walk that Herzog took in winter from Munich to Paris, believing that the person he was going to see in hospital: film-maker Lotte Eisner woul...