Cultural Geography Blog

  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 been telling everyone I've seen for the last month that they have to go and see Wes Anderson's 'Isle of Dogs' . This is still showing in some cinemas as I write this blogpost, and is a real tour de force of creativity and filmmaking. It's a stop-motion animation which involved hundreds of people for a year and a half, and the creation of tens of thousand of bespoke props and different methods of filming at different scales. The story concerns the cat loving Kobayashi dynasty, and the fate of the Mayor's son and his dog, alongside a group of other dogs who have been exiled to Trash Island. My son and I visited the exhibition of sets and figures from the film, which had just opened at the time, and we were able to go in, and collect some memorabilia. We went to see it at Store X on the Strand in London, which was a temporary space. The exhibits, like the plane crash site above, were incredibly detailed and I loved the Taiko drummers who open the film....

Detectorists is one of the best things that has been on the telly over the last few years. Now there is an opportunity to prepare a paper connected with it for the RGS-IBG Annual Conference in 2018. The focus is on Landscapes, and there is no shortage of recent reading I've done that would connect with that, su ch as David Matless 's book 'Landscape and Englishness' and recent work by Rebecca Solnit and Lauret Savoy. I'm almost tempted to put something together as a contribution, but haven't much experience in academic conferences, other than the GTE. The conference strand is described as follows by Innes Keighren: Where “Detectorists” is distinct from most situation comedies is that much of the action takes place outdoors, in the fields and meadows where the programme’s protagonists pursue their hobby. Both aesthetically and thematically, landscape dominates “Detectorists”. Filmed on location in Framlingham, Suffolk—standing in for Essex, and the fict...

Have blogged several times about the work of Richard Long and the connection with landscapes. The recent road race around Box Hill has a few other geographical connections, such as the Olympics geocaches that had been hidden by Sam Atkins and pupils at the Priory School, Portsmouth. Came across this video of the artwork being made: Road Graffiti, which is inspired by the graffiti written on the roads during the Tour de France. Also has connections with other artworks made by Long.

Google World Wonders is a site which I contributed some Educational materials  for a while ago, and have been waiting for it to launch - that wait ended today. Thanks to Keir Clarke for the tip-off once again. The site features a range of CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY locations.... The website offers the chance to explore a number of World Heritage sites. Here's the description from Google. This  new project from Google that allows you to take a virtual trip around 132 of the World's most famous historical and cultural sites. The sites includes historically important locations, such as Stonehenge and Pompeii and also natural wonders, such as the sandy dunes of Australia’s Shark Bay and the rock domes of Yosemite National Park.   Google World Wonders uses Google Maps, Google Street View and Google Earth 3d models to explore these 132 historical locations. Each location also includes YouTube videos and photographs from Getty Images. Information about each location is also provi...