Cultural Geography Blog

Visit Britain has launched a new interactive map showing some of the locations of films , to mark the 20th anniversary of the first Harry Potter book. Latest statistics for 2017 show that there were a record 11.8 million overseas visits to the UK from January to April, up 11% on the same period in 2016. Overseas visitors spent £6.2 billion, up 14% and also setting a new record. Latest flight booking data from ForwardKeys shows that bookings for international arrivals to the UK during the summer are currently tracking 12% ahead of the same period last year.  Tourism is worth £127 billion annually to the UK economy, creating jobs and boosting economic growth across its nations and regions.  Thanks to David Jarratt for the tipoff...

I've started work on one of my summer projects for this year. It's working with Peter Knight from Keele University to 'translate' some of the ideas in an undergraduate geography module called 'Inspirational Landscapes' into a scheme of work for the teaching of the Changing Places module in the new 'A' level. I co-wrote the Changing Places  section in the Cambridge University Press textbook , along with Garrett Nagle and Claire Kyndt, and wanted to develop it a little further as textbooks are of course a little static. Claire has also since developed quite a lot of new ideas while teaching the topic, and we have also planned some fieldwork experiences, which have had to be adapted a little in light of recent events as it happens. This will explore the interface between school and academic geography (which some people have criticised for the undue influence of academic interests on the new 'A' levels, which have not always been the most st...

For people of a certain age, this was a big chunk of our childhood: Brian's voice on Play School and Play Away, and narrating these classics of animation from Gordon Murray. Another sad passing...

An August issue will showcase classic children's toys... cultural geography / social history writ large... or small...

Via Paul Baker VCV Geo Advert Final by GeoBlogs on Scribd

This is a hard topic to write about, but an important one.  Around ten years ago, Dan Ellison and myself put together a bid for the Royal Geographical Society's ' Going Beyond ' Land Rover travel bursary which involves a Land Rover and some cash. Sadly, we were not successful, although a future winner of that grant was Felicity Aston's Pole of Cold trip, which I connected with. The idea we had back then, was of turning the vehicle into what we called our 'space'ship, and we were going to arrive at various locations where we would meet up with prominent geographers and groups of school children, and be guided by them as to the geographies of their place. One of the geographers who'd agreed to meet us was Danny Dorling , who was at the University of Sheffield back then. Danny was going to meet us in Sheffield and take us on a short journey, which would take about 15 minutes, but which would take us from one place to another whose residents had a life e...