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Showing posts from July, 2020

Great British Literature Map

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I'm a great fan of the maps produced by ST&G. I've got all their previous maps, and they are lovely things. Their latest map is a Literature Map of the UK. This features: The Top 50 of Britain’s literary spots, a truly thrilling road trip connecting them all, and reading suggestions to bring them to life in unique fashion Over 1,000 settings, fictional locations and real places that inspired fictional locations Follow in the footsteps of your favourite characters with over 30 amazing routes Over 600 brilliant bookshops and lovely libraries Over 250 of the finest literary festivals and events A litany of museums, attractions, graves, memorials, trails, theatres and scenes of other glorious literature-related tales and random nuggets It can be ordered from the Ordnance Survey shop on this link. Or visit their Marvellous Maps website, and 'get smitten with Britain'.

Place 2020

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Place 2020 is a new project which has been launched as part of the Centre for Place Writing. The work here explores, via a dynamic mix of new writing (poetry, essay, commentary, reflection and story), films, photography and podcasts, how ideas of ‘place’ shifted radically across the globe in 2020, as billions of people went into lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter Movement changed how we think about everything. New work will feature on this site throughout 2020. An excellent piece by Amy Liptrot is part of the first few pieces, exploring young people's relationship with nature. I often think about how the geographies of our childhoods define our psyches. I grew up next to cliffs, in big skies with the open ocean and wide horizons. I’m coming to see that my son’s ‘local acre’, his native mile, will be different. Where we now live, in West Yorkshire, is about as landlocked as you can be in the UK. His is a world of woods and rivers, of ter

'Landscapes of Detectorists' - from Uniformbooks

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"Alright geography degree, where should we be searching?" I've been waiting for this book for some time, and it's lovely to finally hold it in my hand and flick through its contents before diving in. I didn't quite do a "gold dance" when my lovely postlady left it on the doormat and retreated two metres, but not far off. 'Detectorists' instantly grabbed me when the first episode of the first series was broadcast on the BBC on 2nd of October 2014.  The week before I'd watched another wonderful Toby Jones performance in 'Marvellous'  about the life of Neil Baldwin, so I was keen to see him in this new series too. There was something calming about the series as it progressed, with the relationship between Becky and Andy, the banter about 'University Challenge', their random finds and changing relationships. There are so many small moments of joy (many of which make it into the pages of the book) The random curries made f

OFQUAL Consultation on Fieldwork in GCSEs for 2021

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“Fieldwork is the best and most immediate means of bringing the two aspects of the subject (i.e. a body of knowledge and a distinctive method of study) together in the experience of the pupil. Therefore, fieldwork is a necessary part of geographical education; it is not an optional extra”   (Bailey, 1974) Over the years I've been part of many consultations and responses to consultations from the GA and also in a personal capacity.  Over the years the GA and other bodies have had to fight to keep aspects of the subject, indeed the whole subject itself, on the curriculum. Many consultations receive a low number of responses. This often plays to those who want to skew the result in a particular way by saying "look, there's no real opposition to this in the responses to the consultation". OFQUAL has a consultation running until the 16th of July.  TAKE PART! This consultation is on the content and running of the 2021 Exams for GCSE, AS (which nobody really