Cultural Geography Blog

  This piece in 'The Guardian' looks at a recent visit made by the Poet Laureate (and geography graduate) Simon Armitage to Svalbard. It talks about a new poem called 'The Summit', which is featured in the piece. He travels with Jemma Wadham, whose recent book 'Ice Rivers' is excellent... How it was poetry - not quite #geography - that took #SimonArmitage to 4 points of the compass "I’m a #geography graduate. Part of the attraction was exotic field trips, though I ended up monitoring bus-stop activity in Portsmouth - not the Atacama" https://t.co/pGf8HD2K1T — Steve Brace (@SteveBraceGeog) October 7, 2023 The poems from the series are available in a special signed Faber pamphlet  which I have a copy of. 

This was shown on BBC4 last night and can be found on the iPlayer currently. An excellent film following an Inuit hunter in Greenland as he heads out into the landscape surrounding his home town to hunt and fish, and constructs an igloo for shelter. It explores the threats to this culture from the rapidly changing climate as sea ice thins and traditional skills are lost.  The opening scene where he says goodbye to his daughters as they play on their smartphones, before heading out to harness his huskies was a lovely way to set up the cultural changes taking place, and the drone filming of the landscape was incredible. The music was also excellent:

A nice piece in the Geographical magazine on "artist and geographer" Nick Jones.  He travelled up to the Arctic to paint icebergs in the Arctic Ocean and the results are rather wonderful. Check them out.

  I've spoken and blogged about this book many times, and you can now listen to extracts from it on Radio 4 as it has been selected, around 35 years after its first UK publication as the 'Book of the Week'. A heads-up that, to my delight, Barry Lopez's masterpiece Arctic Dreams (1986) will be Book of the Week on @BBCRadio4 this week, starting 09.45am today. The book––and the writer––that made me a writer. Barry passed away in December this year. https://t.co/Eo8vKQKIV0 — Robert Macfarlane (@RobGMacfarlane) June 21, 2021 Barry Lopez is someone whose work has been important to me throughout my career. Catch up with the episodes here. In Episode One of Arctic Dreams Barry Lopez reflects on his first encounters with the surprisingly varied and resilient inhabitants of the polar north and on modern man’s vexed relationship with this beguiling continent. In his breath-taking natural, social and cultural history of the Arctic, Lopez reveals the essential mystery and beauty o...

I've just finished watching the 10 episodes of 'The Terror'. It's a gothic horror style series, which is based on the expedition involving two ships: the 'Erebus' and 'Terror' to find the NW Passage. This much is factual, as is the disappearance of the men and their ships. Three were found buried on Beechey Island, and the two ships have also recently been discovered, with 'Erebus' also being the subject of a book written by Michael Palin. The trailer is here. It's worth watching. It's a little overlong and could have been slimmed back a lot. It's very dark in terms of not seeing what's going on very clearly at times, but also quite gory and unsettling. There are some terrific performances, particularly from Jared Harris, Paul Ready and Adam Nagaitis. The scenery is a little polystyrene at times rather than ice, but there are some excellent scenes, including a carnival on the ice, and some later scenes in the fog... the creature s...

A new exhibition is opening at the British Museum  in May 2020. It looks like it will be excellent. From 28,000-year-old mammoth ivory jewellery to modern refitted snow mobiles, the objects in this immersive exhibition reveal the creativity and resourcefulness of indigenous peoples in the Arctic. Developed in collaboration with Arctic communities, the exhibition celebrates the ingenuity and resilience of Arctic peoples throughout history. It tells the powerful story of respectful relationships with icy worlds and how Arctic peoples have harnessed the weather and climate to thrive. The dramatic loss of ice and erratic weather caused by climate change is putting unprecedented pressure on Arctic peoples, testing their adaptive capacities and threatening their way of life. What happens in the Arctic will affect us all and this exhibition is a timely reminder of what the world can learn from its people. Long ago people knew something was going to happen to this earth. How they...

United Nation has announced 2019 as the International Year of Indigenous Languages.   These are vital to indigenous communities. I'm keen to connect with other teachers to do something around this in 2019, so reaching out to overseas colleagues, particularly those who might be in the Arctic area.  I was particularly taken by Romesh Ranganathan's visit to Nunavut, which was shown over the Christmas period, and made a point of exploring the cultural strengths of the community, and the importance of the language and traditions such as singing and dancing. I know that there is a real link between language and the landscape, and it is this I would be keen to pursue, partly based on my interest in the writings of Hugh Brody and Barry Lopez.

A New York Times article which has a relevance for the work I am doing on Polar regions at the moment, but also a tremendous resonance about the connection between people and ice. I will be adding this to some articles from the ' Earth' magazine , which explore the changing lives of Inuit hunters, and the changing landscapes they now need to navigate. “Inuit are people of the sea ice. If there is no more sea ice, how can we be people of the sea ice?”

Countdown to Crystal Serenity: The 1 per cent are coming to Canada’s Arctic https://t.co/616MkOUUsr via @macleansmag pic.twitter.com/RpJ1CEzTWf — Jane George (@sikugirl) July 19, 2016 This post has been in draft for a couple of months, and the story has evolved since it was first announced. This would now be a useful idea for exploring fragile cold environments. I'm going to try to develop this as an evolved case study piece, but ran out of time… will come back to this I think I've just read a Jonathan Franzen piece on Antarctica in the Times which was excellent and worth hunting out... The Crystal Serenity is a large cruise ship, which is going to boldly go on a voyage this summer, setting off in August 2016… and it's one that all geographers should be fascinated by. The ship is going to sail around the north of Canada, and go through what would have been referred to in the past as the Northwest Passage. The ship's website has a range of detail on the vo...

Over the Christmas holiday, the Pole of Cold team were making their way towards Oymyakon : the Pole of Cold (coldest inhabited place in the Northern Hemisphere) I've blogged about the project before, which has its Twitter feed and Facebook page. Meanwhile I was a little closer to home... in fact I was at home, working on a resource for the From the Field section of the Royal Geographical Society website. These resources are now live on the KS4 From the Field section of the RGS website. Check them out here: 3 lesson plans with all the materials , plus plenty of extension ideas and other materials, with more to come... Thanks to Matt Podbury for some kind words already. Let me know if you use them or take a look.