Cultural Geography Blog

An RGS-heavy day today alongside my teaching. This post is a cross-posting from my dedicated RGS blog - please go and check it out if you haven't already.   It shares all the news linked to my role as Vice President: Education. This curriculum review will be one of the things I'm interested in for the next year or so. Joined a very interesting Zoom call followed by some emails related to the opening of the RGS' request for your thoughts as part of the 'call for evidence' of the Francis Curriculum Review. That request is now open as of lunchtime today. New on the RGS website is this call for your thoughts ahead of the Curriculum and Assessment Review for England, which is being chaired by Becky Francis. At the moment, the review is in a phase where they call for evidence. This evidence will inform later stages of the consultation. The Government has launched an open call for evidence to inform its curriculum and assessment review for England, which is being chaired

A cross-posting from my GeoLibrary blog which has hundreds of books recommended and with some information about where they might be used, and why they deserve a shelf on the GeoLibrary. This book is on the Booker longlist . It's a fiction book, but is packed with geography. It's about four astronauts and two cosmonauts in the International Space Station. The author said of the book that she wanted to write a 'space pastoral' The book follows one day, and the orbits they trace over the world. In between their routine jobs and exercise, we hear about them and their families and their thoughts as they stare down on the earth below - tracking the path of a super-typhoon with their privileged view of the world below. There are some truly wonderful passages, and it's definitely a geography book. The descriptions of each landscape and country as they appear are really beautiful. The section here is part of a chapter - they are all very short and this helps you subdivide t

You wait ages for an album about Amelia Earhart and then two come along at once. The new album from Public Service Broadcasting: "The Last Flight"  comes out in early October and some tracks are already out. I'm looking forward to seeing some of them being played at the end of October. Meanwhile Laurie Anderson has released her own version of that last flight and it's very different to the PSB one, and excellent. It's the usual mix of recordings, sound and vocal effects and electronic music, and is a lot more accessible than some of Laurie Anderson's work. Available on the usual streaming services.

Spotify leads me to all sorts of new places musically. Through a series of links, I came across a 'genre' of electronic / ambient music linked to place... Here's a description of one of my discoveries: Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan 's new album, Your Community Hub, compellingly continues his sonic exploration of the New Towns movement. The issues the councillors, planners, and architects set out to solve still resound and echo throughout society. For the latest instalment in this unique project, Gordon Chapman-Fox turns his laser eye to focus on Community and the Community Centres that populated Warrington and Runcorn in order to provide all the facilities people needed within a five minute walk from their home. These planning ideas predated the current discussions of fifteen minute cities by fifty years. Those intervening years have seen a decline in our community centres and services: handy access to a GP or dentist, Post Offices, youth clubs, local sh

  I was sorry to hear this evening of the passing of Norman Ackroyd on Monday: one of our very greatest landscape artists. He was a remarkable printmaker and artist . He shared the laborious process of making his etchings in several documentaries. Listen to this programme with Robert MacFarlane. RIP the great artist Norman Ackroyd (1938-16.09.24): etcher-magician who conjured weather & light from metal & acid; his work constitutes one of the great visual records of this archipelago’s edges. We travelled together—& I made this programme with him: https://t.co/Y5licHxpcP pic.twitter.com/8bQDR95Fph — Robert Macfarlane (@RobGMacfarlane) September 18, 2024 Here's the first part of a documentary on his method featuring some of his art...

This piece of music is important to me...