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Showing posts from 2022

99% Invisible

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  Another reminder of this podcast series. There are hundreds of episodes, many of which focus on the story of a particular object or a particular place. This episode starts with the story of Beechey Island, where the graves of some of the sailors from Sir John Franklin's lost expedition were found. My friend Val has been fortunate enough to visit Beechey Island on a Hurtigruten voyage - what an amazing privilege. Plenty here for units on the geographies of stuff....

350 000 views

Thanks for reading the blog.  I'll keep drip feeding stuff here on the broad area of Cultural Geography. 

We are England - Showmen

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  Early on in my teaching career in King's Lynn , I taught quite a few of the families who were involved in the fairground business: showmen (and women) who ran fairground rides and the related stalls, as did my wife, who was also involved in traveller education for a while. The first show in the year is the 'Mart', which takes place in King's Lynn around Valentine's Day, and has been held for over 800 years! It takes over the Tuesday Market Place, and attracts thousands of visitors. Here's a drone film flyover of the Mart from a few years ago. One of the families I taught back then was the Appletons, and a week or so ago there was an interesting programme on this family and the patriarch 'Nipper' Appleton. Fairs like this are very much part of British culture.  As a child in Rotherham we had the 'Statis' fair (probably from Statutes) which was held in the Autumn out near the old Millmoor ground. When I later lived in Hull while completing my tea

Census 2021 - How well do you know your area?

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These quizzes were previously available for the 2011 Census, and are now back with data from the 2021 Census. ✨IT'S QUIZ TIME!✨ So, you think you know your local area? Now you can test your knowledge in the new #CensusQuiz and broadcast your scores on to your friends and followers on social media! https://t.co/yIf0YfMx6q pic.twitter.com/SHLuFnDw14 — Ahmad Barclay (@bothness) December 2, 2022 The quizzes can be embedded, which makes them particularly useful for teachers who can add them to VLE pages etc.

Object Lessons

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A new batch of Object Lessons books is now out and I came across an excellent display of them at Heffers in Cambridge earlier in the week, and added the BURGER book to my collection for school. There is a further batch out in 2023 which will take the series to 80 books.  These are perfect for discussions with older students in particular and each is very readable. Check them out - perfect for units on commodities and globalisation and of course for Quotidian Geographies.

GI Pedagogy - Multiplier event - 9th December

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  I opened up an invitation to an online event yesterday. It will take place on Friday the 9th of December and will be online. I organised a face to face multiplier event to share outcomes from the ERASMUS-funded GI Pedagogy project , but this was not able to attract colleagues because of the challenges of travelling and the business of this term. The plan now is to have an online meeting instead which I hope that people may be able to attend without the need to travel to Ely.  This will allow me to demonstrate the importance of GIS in the curriculum and the idea of telling stories. You can also get a sneak preview of the other materials we have produced, including a training course. A chance to have a discussion around GIS too. Suitable for Primary and Secondary teachers. I'm going to try again to get this event in before Christmas. Free tickets can be obtained on Eventbrite.

Marie Tharp Google Doodle

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 A really lovely creative resource. Moday's  Google Doodle was a celebration of the work of pioneering geologist Marie Tharp. Marie Tharp has featured on this blog a number of times before. She completed some vital work mapping the ocean floor. I have a picture book which tells her life story, and the graphics here look similar to that book. If you follow the link you can see the story behind the creation of the mapping, and also the Doodle itself., Like all Google Doodles, a great deal of work goes into them.

Iceland Trips with Rayburn Tours

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Cross posting from the LivingGeography blog. I spent five days of the first week of my half term in Iceland.  This introduced me to a couple of new locations which I hadn't visited before - including the car parks and tracks leading to the recent Fagradasfjall lava flows - and also reminded me of a great many that I'd been to previously before the pandemic and I enjoyed experiencing the power of Gullfoss (and the taste of the ice cream at Efstidalur). There had been some changes in tourst infrastructure in familiar locations with others being constructed e.g. a nice new toilet block at Thingvellir for visitors, and new paths etc. I will be working with Rayburn Tours  to lead future tours through 2023 and beyond. I've got a special Iceland blog which will host all the reading and planning I'm doing around these tours, which already hosts the year long 365 blog project which I completed in 2020 (when I was originally going to be visiting four times). On future visits I

The Rings of Power and the creation of Mordor

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I'm working my way through the series now that all episodes have been screened. At the end of Episode 6 of 'The Rings of Power' there is a volcanic eruption. This is a pthreatomagmatic eruption it appears, when large amounts of steam are generated when water comes into contact with magma. This is an eruption which has been 'confirmed by volcano specalists' as being possible. Galadriel and others are caught up in a pyroclastic flow, but survive - although that would not be possible. Violent volcanic eruptions occur in large part because water is involved. The water is dissolved in the magma. The magma rises to the surfaces, the water makes bubbles that can turn to steam and the steam and water expand so rapidly that they basically blow the magma apart. That stuff piles up near a central vent and that’s what makes big volcanoes. If that water is in a confined area, like a bottleneck, there’s going to be a steam eruption — we call it a phreatomagmatic eruption. We see

The Dark is Rising

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Very exciting news last week... Hello -- some news! I've adapted Susan Cooper's cult-classic novel, The Dark Is Rising, for a 12-part audio drama/podcast on @bbcworldservice . Dir. & co-adapted by @SimonMcBurney . Starring Toby Jones, Harriet Walter. Music by @JohnnyFlynnHQ & more. #TheDarkIsRising Brief 🧵 pic.twitter.com/FANmyhAAVR — Robert Macfarlane (@RobGMacfarlane) October 20, 2022 This is an excellent book as part of a series of books by Susan Cooper. I have a lovely old edition and have read it regularly over the years. Very much looking forward to this! Toby Jones and Harriet Walter are incredible actors as well...

Kebu

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Kebu - a favourite of mine - a Finnish musician who makes music using analogue synthesisers...

Landscape and Lamb

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  Some foods are closely linked with the landscapes in which they are created? There is certainly a case to be made for an Edible Landscapes unit focussing on foods with Protected Geographical status. I like the promotion and graphic design on the support for Icelandic lamb, The tagline is good too. I'd go so far as to wear one of those if they were available to buy. The marketing brand book is full of wonderful images of the Icelandic landscape which provides the terroir for this food. And while in Iceland, seek out a bowl of Kjötsúpa!

Back to Iceland

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After the hiatus that was COVID19, I'm pleased to say that I will be heading back to Iceland at the end of October for the first time since before the pandemic.  I had been due to visit three or four times in 2020, but they all had to be cancelled. This also meant missing out on seeing Ben Hennig, who works at the University of Iceland. I am heading there to complete my training as a Field Study Tutor for Rayburn Tours. This means that I've also gone back to adding regular posts to a blog that I put together in 2020 ahead of the original planned visits before COVID19 intervened. This started out as a 365 project, with a post every day for a year, which I managed to complete. I will be directing teachers from the schools that I work with to this as a resource which includes information on a whole range of Icelandic languages and culture. It's called Fieldnotes from Iceland.

Eastenders Credits Sequence

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I was alerted to the fact that the end credits of Eastenders on Wednesday this week were subtly (ish) changed to act as a trailer for Frozen Planet II. You can see the video of the credits here. The new end credits saw London’s East End transformed to show the river Thames bursting its banks with parts of the capital under water in a hypothetical scenario of what London could look like in the future. It then zoomed out to capture a satellite image of the Arctic and point to the last episode of Sir David Attenborough’s series, underlining the message that the challenge of melting ice in this frozen region could one day affect us all close to home.  

Geographer's Gaze

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  I worked on this project with Peter Fox , another former President for over a year and a half on and off, with several meetings at Solly Street and some other work remotely. Isabel Richardson had done a great deal of preparatory work at Solly Street on the lantern slide collection, which used to number in the tens of thousands. Isabel had been cataloguing the collection. The plan was to make use of a fund generously donated by former Honorary Treasurer Brian Ellis , to bring these images back out into the open, and provide some ideas for their use in the classroom as well as some context. I worked with Peter Fox and we co-wrote the accompanying text for each image on the GA website. The website area is now live, and there is also an article that I have written for the latest GA Magazine. My original version of the text was a little longer than the final version, which we agreed needed to be a bit tighter to increase the instant accessibility of the resource. For those who may want

Into Iraq

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This is a new Michael Palin series, being shown on Channel 5 and opening up a place which is unknown to many. It's a country that has been defined by decades of war and conflict. Palin wants to explore a country that is looking to the future instead. The first episode starts on a tributary of the River Tigris, which he follows for around 1000 miles, starting in Turkey on the shores of Lake Hazar. Mesopotamia - the land between two rivers is a former name for this area. 6000 years ago it was the birth place of civilisation. This is a country which has been opened up in recent years, but still retains some danger. The border crossing is also suitably problematic, involving local 'fixers' as always. There is a book to accompany the series as well. From the opening interview with his Kurdish guide, he is immediately into ideas of identity and the prohibitions on speaking their language, and explores the area with his usual curiousity and charm.  Well worth taking a watch on Ch

GeographySW - Primary newsbites newsletter now available

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I've teamed up with Simon and John from the GA Award-winning  Geography SouthWest to produce some support for Primary geographers.  I'll be working with Emma Espley to produce a monthly Primary newsletter and blog, and you can access it easily by visiting the website and clicking the Primary tab. The September 2022 issue is here now, and we are already working on the October 2022 issue. Feedback and suggestions for future issues welcome.

Little Grey Men

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I remember watching this I'm sure... I certainly had the books...

Culture and Food

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Memories of a childhood in a Chinese take-away . This is good listening and reminds us of the cultural importance of food and its link to family and identity. The Chinese take-away is based in a former mining village in Wales. Angela Hui grew up behind the counter of her parents’ Chinese takeaway, Lucky Star, in the former mining village of Beddau, Wales.  It opened on the luckiest day of the century, 8 August 1988, an auspicious date with the number eight signifying good wealth, fortune and prosperity in Chinese culture – three key factors needed for a young, growing immigrant family.  On one side of the counter Angela interacts with the takeaway’s loyal staff, Cecilia, Dewi and Lowri.  They serve and deliver food lovingly prepped and cooked by Angela’s parents. Regular customers pester Angela at the counter as she tries to do her homework. Running a Chinese takeaway is hard work and there is tension in the overlapping spaces of home and work, playground and business. Angela and her t

Doreen Massey

While researching for my GA Presidents blog, I came across a book which featured a biography of Doreen Massey.

Yi Fu Tuan - RIP

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Cross posting from LivingGeography blog.  Very sad news of the passing yesterday of Yi-Fu Tuan, at 92. Such an important scholar in so many fields, from geography to Sherlock Holmes studies. pic.twitter.com/nk5wutDvCh — matthew edney (@mhedney) August 11, 2022 Sad news yesterday of the passing of geographer Yi Fu Tuan, whose work will be familiar to many, and who inspired some of our thinking around Mission:Explore and other work on place, and the idea of topophilia. I wasn't able to confirm the news, but it appears it is now confirmed. We are deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Professor Yi-Fu Tuan. His work has had a profound influence on the way in which we all think about key geographical concepts. He will be sorely missed both by those that knew him well and by the discipline as a whole. pic.twitter.com/zdndOzMCgk — Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) (@RGS_IBG) August 12, 2022 His work has been influential for many - particularly in the area of place and other conc

Town is by the Sea

 A lovely telling of a classic children's book.

The World reimagined

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Alongside the Radical Landscapes exhibition at the Tate Liverpool I have previously posted about, there is now another reason to visit the city this summer. The World Reimagined globes are arriving in the city as well. The Globes have been created by artists from LCR and across the UK, bringing the city to life with diverse experiences and creative styles. They include Ras Akyem, Bryony Benge-Abbott, Amy Bourbon, Fiona Compton, Nicola Constantina, Caroline Daly, Kimathi Donkor, Sumuyya Khader, Jioni Warner. A tenth Globe has been created by local artist Amber Akaunu, inspired by collaboration with local communities. Schools have also got involved, with approx 38 small globes being featured on the trail created by schools who have taken part in The World Reimagined learning programme this term. Plenty of interesting interactive content if you follow the links from the website. Plenty of cultural links.

Today's soundtrack

Love this version of a classic Goldfrapp track from 2008. 

Birmingham

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Cold War Steve's collages have provided a regular commentary on the (lack of) competence and self-serving nature of politicians in our government for some years now, and are all works of art, with some regular themes emerging during that time in the way that certain individuals are represented, and with links to other popular culture as well as classic works of art.  Other pieces are produced for particular events, such as the Queen's Jubilee 2022. There are also jigsaws of certain pieces as well for those who want a challenge. They make excellent gifts for the right person in your life. He has produced an affordable sized A3 print to coincide with the closing of the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. Benny’s Babbies (King Kong vs Mechanical Bull Special Edition). Signed! Only on sale until Monday. 👇👇👇 https://t.co/ADEkHxArg0 pic.twitter.com/VQls6uvZVl — Cold War Steve (@coldwarsteve) August 5, 2022 I have one ordered to be framed for the geography classroom to use as an ex

Fire of Love

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This is a film I watched earlier in the week. ★★★★ - Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian. Don't miss the explosive Fire of Love. — Dogwoof (@Dogwoof) July 29, 2022 When I first started teaching, there were very few videos which had been made close to volcanoes. Plate Tectonics as a theory was only about twenty years old. The films we did have were mostly made by a couple of French volcanologists: Maurice and Katia Krafft. They were the Jacques Cousteau of volcanoes. He explored the sea, they prowled the edges of lava flows, photographing, filming and sampling. They made frequent media appearances and made films and wrote books to fund their research. The style of filming and the red hats are similar to those of Cousteau ( and the Wes Anderson homage as well ) They divided volcanoes into the red and the grey. The grey volcanoes were the dangerous ones... think Mt. St. Helens, Pinatubo, Nevado del Ruiz and Unzen in Japan. The film is made from media from their archive, with a few animation

Reading FC and the Climate Stripes

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  Today @ReadingFC and @ReadingFCWomen unveiled their new home kit for the 2022/23 season, incorporating the climate stripes on the sleeves and shorts. The stripes used on the kit represent changes in temperature in Reading since the club was founded in 1871. #HoopsForTheFuture pic.twitter.com/W8jFYmFHk5 — Ed Hawkins (@ed_hawkins) July 25, 2022   An interesting development - the university teaming up with a local football team. This tells the whole story and also has a close up of the kit. “The bold stripe design, which features on the sleeves of the new home shirt, was first created by the University of Reading’s Professor Ed Hawkins in 2018. Each stripe represents the average temperature for a single year, relative to the average temperature over the period as a whole; shades of blue indicate cooler-than-average years, while red shows years that were hotter than average. And the stripes on the home shirt specifically track climate change in Reading across the full 151-year existen

John Martin

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When I hear the name, I often think originally of the late John Martyn - the musician who recorded the classic album 'Solid Air' and others, and who I saw quite a few times in various locations including a festival tent, and also at the Crucible Theatre, where he descended the steps of a play which had its scenery set up on the stage already. John Martin  was a painter, and a favourite of my former GA colleague Anne Greaves. He created some hugely dramatic images. Hugely popular in his time, Martin was derided by the Victorian Art establishment as a 'people's painter', for although he excited mass audiences with his astounding scenes of judgement and damnation, to critics it was distasteful. In a sense ahead of this time, his paintings – full of rugged landscapes and grandiose theatrical spectacle – have an enduring influence on today's cinematic and digital fantasy landscapes. This exhibition presents a spectacular vision, capturing the full drama and impact of

Representations of Place: Salford

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Thanks to Derek Robertson for the tip off to this BBC Sounds programme which I enjoyed. It has shades of Vivien Stanshall's 'Sir Henry at Rawlinson End'.  You can listen to the first episode here. The distinguished-but-hip London poet Sir Ralph Stanza is the new poet-in-residence for Salford. This is all thanks to a specially-funded scheme displaying great cultural magnanimity towards the good people of the north of England.  As he straddles the streets of Orsdall and Weaste, in his panama hat, blazer and silk scarf, Sir Ralph's goal is to blend in with the locals and express their anger through his verse. Written by and starring James Quinn as Sir Ralph Stanza. A little bit of language that is possibly NSFS (not suitable for school)

Far flung podcast

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As the holidays approach for most teachers, you may want to sort out some holiday podcast listening for those long journeys to the coast. This one has a range of interesting episodes including one on winds with an input from Nick Hunt and other episodes from around the world e.g. one on decolonising Puerto Rico through food etc. I loved contributing to, and working with, this beautiful TED podcast, Far Flung, with Saleem Reshamwala... a journey into the winds. It's a really lovely piece of work. Many thanks @kidethnic , @Creosotesky and @MuseoBora . You can listen here: https://t.co/khyh0pQ36X pic.twitter.com/S6d2XlQM5y — Nick Hunt (@underscrutiny) July 21, 2022

Tour de France and Geology

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Thanks to Stephen Schwab for the original lead to a Conversation piece which introduces a new blogging project. The piece is by Douwe van Hinsbergen. This connects the Tour de France with the geology of each stage. The blog can be accessed here. There is also a Twitter account. I watch the Tour de France as much as possible, and the helicopter shots always show the landscape at its most spectacular, with the Alps over the last few days and the valley of the Tarn earlier today. Here's the details of today's stage for example, showing the presence of lithium in the area. This is really nicely done, and reminds me of the blogging that Val Vannet (with a few inputs from me) did to follow Mark Beaumont's first round the world cycling expedition.

Geographical Meanings and Representations - new from Time for Geography

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Another new film from Time for Geography. Everyday we learn more and more about our world through the eyes of others: representations in art, books videos and social media posts. So to what extent can we rely on these representations to construct meanings about the world? And what meanings might be hidden within or beyond an image video or story? In this video, we team up with Dr Ruth Slatter and Dr Mary Kelly to explore these important questions in human geography. We discover how geographers read representations, deconstruct representations and even go beyond representations to build a rich understanding of the world.

New comic: Everyday Stories of Climate Change

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A few years ago, I made use of a comic which had been created by Gemma Sou, working with an illustrator called John Cei Douglas, called 'After Maria'. It was useful during the lockdown to encourage students to consider the impact of a hazard. There is a new comic that has now been made available which contains a series of Everyday Stories of Climate Change - vignettes of places which are affected by the Climate Emergency. This has been developed by Gemma again, but this time it has been created with the help of different people. Travel to Bangladesh, South Africa, Bolivia, Puerto Rico, & Barbuda to discover how low-income families experience climate change, & their strategies to adapt & recover.  The comic is based on research by Adeeba Nuraina Risha, Gina Ziervogel & Gemma. Illustrated by Cat Sims. It can be downloaded from here.

Ingrid Pollard at Turner Contemporary

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There is a new Ingrid Pollard retrospective exhibition opening this week at the Turner Contemporary Gallery in Margate. Guyanese-born British artist and photographer Ingrid Pollard’s Turner Prize-nominated exhibition Carbon Slowly Turning will be presented at the gallery this summer (9 July – 25 September 2022). Created In partnership with MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, this is the first exhibition to fully explore Pollard’s experimental works, from the 1980’s to the present day. The exhibition, which will span Turner Contemporary’s first-floor galleries, is Pollard’s first major survey and examines her substantial contribution to British art.  Her work explores how images and identity are constructed, especially in representations of history and the landscape, working with film, photography, installation and sound. Neither a retrospective nor a chronological display, this exhibition interrogates Britishness, race and sexuality. Turner Contemporary will exhibit an exclusive series of blac

Matt Black's American Geography

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A cross-posting from my Geography in/on Film blog. Matt Black's 'American Geography' is a film to accompany a project where he explores the poorer parts of the USA. It is a Magnum Photos project. Between 2015 and 2020, Matt Black traveled over 100,000 miles across 46 states. American Geography documents the experiences of those living in some of the poorest communities in the nation. Starting in his hometown in California’s Central Valley, where billions of dollars are generated every year in agricultural output but one-third of the population lives in poverty, he traveled to other areas of “concentrated poverty” – as US census definition of places with a poverty rate of 20 percent or more. What Black found is that rather than being distant anomalies, these communities were rarely more than a two-hour drive apart enabling him to cross the country without ever crossing above the poverty line. There is also a website which has further details on the project including diaries

Tribute to Barry Lopez

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Thanks to Point Reyes Books for organising this webinar. A special tribute to Barry Lopez (1945-2020), featuring John Luther Adams, Bathsheba Demuth, Jane Hirshfield, Robert Macfarlane, Colum McCann, and Rebecca Solnit, along with Barry’s wife Debra Gwartney. John Freeman served as moderate the conversation. This event was presented by Point Reyes Books, in partnership with Elliott Bay Book Company, Emergence Magazine, and Orion Magazine.  This recording has been edited due to copyright issues. In the original, John Luther Adams' tribute was followed by a recording of "Sky With Four Suns." The event concluded with an excerpt from "Horizons," Jeremy Seifert's film about Barry Lopez, which can be found on the Emergence Magazine website. See later in the post. I've read Barry's final collection of essays which came out last weekend, and it is really rather wonderful and memorable, and shocking... and it will make you cry. Get yourself a copy... Here'

GeogPod: National Fieldwork Week

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One of the best ways to appreciate the landscape is to head out on fieldwork.  The latest GeogPod has been released and it features Paula Richardson and I talking about the GA's National Research Report and how that fed into the development of the National Fieldwork Week.  This starts on Monday the 6th of June. Episode 53 of #GeogPod is now available! In this episode, @GAGeogger speaks with @GeoBlogs and Paula Richardson on fieldwork Listen now at https://t.co/hLSfHDfVhp Series 9 of GeogPod is kindly sponsored by @CambridgeInt #geography #nationalfieldworkweek #podcast #education pic.twitter.com/sk62VGtEQS — Geographical Association (@The_GA) June 4, 2022 Thanks to John Lyon for hosting - see if you can spot the question I wasn't expecting... :) 

Our Place in Space

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I've been following the latest installation by Oliver Jeffers. It allows people to find out their Place in Space: to put Earth into its context. "The only place where... stories are told." Astronauts have the 'overview effect' when they look down on the planet and Oliver wanted to show the scale of the Solar System. Oliver  has created a walk way which runs through the city of Derry and is shortly heading for Cambridge. See more details here .  If you can’t get to Belfast or Cambridge this summer, there is a free app which allows you to follow the walk virtually. Download it from this link. One of the aims of the walk is to consider scale – an important idea in geography too.   There are also teaching resources to download exploring some of the ideas, which may be of interest even if you don’t follow the trail. Let us know if you take part with your class, or perhaps your family. The trail is about humanity's place in the solar system. It's going to Cambr

LIDAR

The new Bruce Hornsby album has a song called LIDAR for all the geographers out there. Lyrics are all about 3D mapping and open data sets - a little niche :) Scanning forest canopies, evidence to be found They're free online in the public domain Mapping truth, learning skills, through the laze Big fan of Bruce since 1986, and seen him live three times in that time on his rare trips to the UK...

GI Pedagogy Training Course - 4-6 July

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Last week I had a meeting of the GI Pedagogy group of partners - which is funded by an ERASMUS+ grant, given by the British Council. We have been working on resources and an online teacher training course.  We now have an opportunity for you to join us for a face to face event in Madrid. Free training course for secondary teachers - introducing an Innovative Pedagogical Model for Teaching using GIS, July 4-6 2022, Madrid, @GIPedagogy project, some travel grants available - find out more and register at https://t.co/8uy2lRNfpA — karl_donert (@karldonert) May 19, 2022 The Registration form is here, and you can also request a first-come first-served grant of €200 to help with the cost of attending if you are outside of Spain. It would be great to have you there. Happy to answer any further questions as well. 

The Clock Winds Down

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Thanks to Anne Dolan for the tipoff to this powerful new music from Christy Moore.

Singh Sisters

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This exhibition was shown on local news in the East of England. It opened this weekend and is on until September. It is taking place in Colchester and I hope to try to get down there. It is called Slaves of Fashion. It explores hidden narratives of Empire, Colonialism, conflict, slavery and luxury lifestyle through the lens of India's historical textile trade and their relevance to modern day legacies and debates around ethical consumerism, racism and the politics of trade. Following its huge success at Liverpool's Walker Art Gallery (where it attracted over 105,000 visitors) and Wolverhampton Art Gallery in 2018, the exhibition is planned to tour further venues - both in the UK and abroad.

Goldfrapp at the Royal Festival Hall

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My friend and colleague Claire had to wait two years to see this concert, but wow was it worth the wait... Goldfrapp's debut album came out 20 years ago, and this was a tour to celebrate that album, along with some other classics. The venue was the Royal Festival Hall, which has the most incredible sound, helped by the sound design and the Q Strings, who were awesome in a James Bond style way... the album is also a classic. Here are some favourites from the evening, captured by people who thankfully were not sat near me...

Stanley Tucci

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At their best, food programmes are also social history, culture, anthropology and much more. This is one of those programmes. Catch up with it on iPlayer. Tonight's programme was 45 minutes of Florentine splendour.

Sidelines

New Bruce Hornsby album due in March - always excellent news... this track has links to COVID in its theme and lyrics...

Taylor Hawkins, RIP

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 Times like these... 

An Hour before it's Dark

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Out today... I bought Marillion's first album on the day of release in March 1983, and saw the band play live quite a few times, including some early gigs with Fish... Grendel and all. The new album came out today, and references climate change, COVID, Greta Thunberg, blood diamonds in Sierra Leone and a whole range of other issues of the modern day, with a reminder that as well as being kind to ourselves it might be better to be hard on ourselves... Interestingly, I'm seeing Tangerine Dream later this month, and their special guest guitarist for the final improvisation session of the concert is Steve Rothery: the Marillion gutarist. Here's the video for the opening track: 'Be Hard on Yourself'

Threads

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This is not related to the 1980s TV drama featuring a nuclear bomb being dropped on Sheffield... Threads is a new online game from the Global Goals Centre , which has had the involvement of a number of organisations. Thanks to Verity Jones for the tipoff. Go here to play the game. The activity explores the product life cycle of an item of clothing, with different routes depending on what the product is, and several other decisions that are taken during the course of the journey... This is revealed at the end. Usefully, the team has also created a set of lesson plans which are helpful for those in KS2 and KS3, and with a strong cross-curricular / Global Goals theme. There are 8 lessons, each with a PPT and an accompanying overview document. Here are the details of the team that created the game and accompanying resources. This is well worth taking a look at, as there might be something here that can slot nicely into, or alongside existing curriculum content and activities.