Cultural Geography Blog

Are you one of the Swifties?  I've flirted with a short unit on geographies of music before, and have previously written for Collins on the subject in a series of KS3 updates which schools could subscribe to, and which I enjoyed writing back in around 2011. I have copies of them and still refer to them even now. This definitely connects with my GA Presidential theme of Everyday Geographies as music is an everyday experience for many - whether experienced through radio playing in a public place or supermarket, or a particularly focussed listening experience with headphones - perhaps on public transport. The ticket below is from a Peter Gabriel show in 1993 which was one of the best live experiences I have ever had. For this year's tour, many people complained about the high ticket prices, but the shows were still pretty much sold out, and the US leg of the tour starts next month. I remember people moaning even then that £20 was quite a lot. Simon Oakes has also written abou...

Simon Jones - creater of the Slow Geography Club and Newsletter - has spent the summer putting together a design guide for Geography Teachers: a resource and a CPD provocation to improve the quality of the visuals that we use with learners and share with each other, and produce better slide decks to communicate our thoughts, along with ideas and practical tasks to consider in departmental meetings. It's been very nicely put together with a great deal of thought, and comes recommended. There are ideas for making best use of CANVA , which offers free educator accounts for all teachers, and free image libraries - some of which you will probably not have come across before. The publication, which is called 'Shine a Light' is now available in two formats.  Download a copy, get an invoice / receipt and charge it to your new year's departmental budget! The basic version is available for a suggested minimum donation of £3.99 Product description: ‘Shine A Light!’ is full of prac...

Bank holiday weekend is almost upon us! What are your plans? Going on any walks? Visiting an urban centre? Listen to our inspirational podcast with guerilla geographer and creative explorer @DanRavenEllison . And check out #SlowWays https://t.co/DeaLVCvyh0 . You're welcome! pic.twitter.com/32r2DBQcsl — always possible (@always_possible) August 25, 2023 Check out the Always Possible Podcast for an interview with Daniel Raven Ellison. “Geography exists at all scales at the same time, so whether it’s the guerrilla gardener pulling up a paving slab and making that a bit wilder, or whether it’s thinking about where you want to go on holiday, that’s all geography.” “Science and history have done a very good job of creating places where people are very aware that they’re recreationally engaging in science or history. Geography, people are playing with that all the time but because of so many boring, dry textbooks, people think that it’s something that it’s not.”

Thanks to Peggy March for the tipoff to a new StoryMap by Canadian Geographic Education.

  Since June, there has been an acceleration in the number of stories related to the climate emergency and some frightening weather extremes and hazard events. The scale of events is increasing, return periods are narrowing and unprecedented data points are being recorded in places from the extreme North to the extreme South and everywhere in between. I started a new blog today which has been brewing up over the summer break as I saved stories from my news feeds as draft posts to work up into completed posts. It will be a place for a mixture of pessimism and optimism. Of news items, mapping, culture and a diverse worldview. There will be some cross-posting from this and other blogs. Have we passed the point of no return?

Another small milestone passed in terms of visitors. Thanks to everyone who has visited and read posts here for their interest...

  MOCC is the Museum of Contemporary Commodities. It is curated by Ian Cook et al and colleagues. Thanks to Ian for giving me a printed copy of the MOCC Zine which sums up some of the activities they have been involved in.   It can be downloaded as CC licnesed PDF file. (PDF download) There are lots of interesting contents in the zine: - I liked the details of Ellie Harrison's Vending Machine project. This also led me to her book: 'The Glasgow Effect' : a project which involved not leaving the city for a year and reflecting on a sustainable lifestyle.

I like this blog post by Oli Mould on the psychogeography of the pub crawl. Many towns have their own particular version of a pub crawl which has evolved over time. Some of these are mapped, and used by tourists and visitors such as stag do's. I lived in Hull while training as a teacher, and this had the ' Beverley Road Run' , featuring pubs along the Beverley Road from the city centre up towards the University area. There were also lots of pubs along West Street in Sheffield. Here's a Deserter podcast: Deserter Pubcast · Psychogeography: Is it just looking for pubs? And the rest (S1, Ep4)

Oppenheimer's soundtrack by Ludwig Göransson is rather good, and also rather long at over 90 minutes. There are several scenes where Oppenheimer's imaginings of quantum physics are visualised and these work particularly well alongside the music. What are your favourite film soundtracks?

Rising Tide opens on the 12th of August.  It looks like it will be worth a visit if you are able to get to Edinburgh. The exhibition will run for a year. Rising Tide considers our relationship to the natural environment through contemporary responses to climate change and plastic waste by Indigenous Australian and Pacific Islander artists. Master fisherman Anthony C Guerrero's contemporary woven baskets made from plastic construction strapping found on his local beach in Guam will be on display. The exhibition hosts the latest version of artist George Nuku’s installation, Bottled Ocean 2123, which imagines the state of the oceans 100 years into the future in an immersive, undersea landscape crafted from single use plastic bottles. Rising Tide also features historical material from National Museums Scotland's collections, such as spear points from the Kimberley region of Western Australia made by Aboriginal men from discarded glass bottles. The vulnerabilities of Oceanic countri...