Cultural Geography Blog

  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-yea...

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...

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)

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

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.

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.

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.

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 ...