hello heard some really awesome people
so far and exploration is is so vital
and so important and for me very much so
exploration is a physical manifestation
of geography and what I’d like to take
you through is and what I think
geography is and what I call guerrilla
geography and hopefully maybe inspire
some of you to take part in in this
practice if you’re not already actually
doing it already and my background is as
a geographer educators a geography
teacher in the UK we’re fortunate enough
that all children have a geography
education but even in the UK
geography is in many ways misunderstood
damaged and marginalized both in the
media and by politicians which astounds
me and really what drove me to help
found the job food collective an
organization that I now work with which
is 35 people who worked creatively
together from primary school teachers
all the way up to university academics
it’s to re-engage people with geography
to make them think again about what it
means to be a geographer and to be proud
of the term and to reclaim it so first
of all um can anyone tell me what
geography is
ah you’ve you’ve heard me I love that
that’s fantastic for me geography is
anything that happens somewhere right
Hogwarts Middle Earth these are real
places in our imaginations and even
places which we say a real all we can do
is imagine those places not really real
by the time we think we know these
places they’ve changed we don’t really
know them anymore anyway which really
brings about sort of the idea well
what’s the point of geography if it’s
everything and I love this quote from
the band faithless you don’t need eyes
to see you need vision you know
geography and being a jogger fur being a
geographer it’s about a particular lens
it’s a viewpoint it’s a way of seeing
the world it’s in patterns and systems
it’s about making connections my wife is
currently in her second year of a PhD in
geography and she’s looking at how women
um have been detained in the UK prison
system after fleeing persecution in
other countries and looking at how their
relationship with home however they
conceptualize that impacts on their
mental health she shares a desk with
someone who works studying pollen in ice
cores to work out the effects of climate
change in the in the distant past I
think many of us in this room can make
the connection between the issues of
climate change and how detention and
refugees and the mental health and
well-being of people may be influenced
in the future you know you’ve seen these
massive connections so gorillas
geography
yeah gorilla geographers could study
gorillas like gorillas gorillas
geography is about thinking creatively
we need creative new solutions at a
political level at an educational level
but in many ways and a job for during
mass he talks about this there’s like a
hard shell of ideas in the legal system
in which we operate in the way that
businesses work and that’s fixed that’s
not moving there’s no crisis of need for
creativity in that area it feels people
subscribe to that yet in the environment
in tiger populations in all sorts of
wildlife situations in terms of climate
change we do face crises and gorillas
geography is about saying you know what
we need to think differently we need to
be creative about places and you start
seeing that already you see people in
campaigns working creatively and using
geographies of concept to achieve that
the occupation movement the word
occupation is a geographical term
guerilla gardeners are about changing
places for the better changing
environments in one way or another
street artists and so on so what are
things I’ve heard a lot which is kind of
bored me is this question of is
exploration dead has everywhere been
explored that’s such an old time
question because clearly everything is
always changing an exploration isn’t
just about the pioneers going off in
retrieving knowledge it’s about children
learning it’s about exploration being a
learning process it’s about searching
for questions and looking for answers in
this case finding a lost parrot finding
a lost sock
these are explorations that things that
everyday that all of us face that it
just as valid is important to the
individual maybe as things that feeling
feel far more exotic a far more distant
we’re all searching for answers where
are we going to die where are we gonna
live where we gonna go on a holiday
what’s our identity where are we from or
geographical ideas so guerrilla
geography is about encouraging people to
see the world differently it’s also
about encouraging people to think about
how the world see them and it’s also
about saying to children and to
ourselves that we make places we are
place makers it’s inevitable by the fact
that everyone
here we are making this place that we’re
in right now where you are you’re
shaping and making places whenever you
buy or consume something you hope to
shape or make a place elsewhere on the
planet when you get home as a teenager
and you speak to your parents and that
moment when you’re asked how was your
day you have the option to sort of prove
and walk up to your room and maybe have
a slightly sour household also ask your
parents you know how was your day and
give them a hug and that place then
becomes a very loving warming
environment maybe not in all households
but you know in some do we teach our
children to think about they look for
its own places at that scale that they
understand or do we want to form a
geography that’s like do you know what I
want you to imagine this distant place
it’s got absolutely nothing to do with
you and if you can’t put a pin on a map
to show what that place is or where it
is or things about it then clearly
you’re illiterate personally I’m
interested in emotional intelligence and
children that empathy their
understanding for these issues so this
illustration is done by the wonderful
Tom Morgan Jones who I work with in the
drug-free collective doing a sea of
children’s books and other things and
I’m going to come back to some of these
in a bit but my point in this slide
really is that children facing number
barriers when it comes to geography yes
in terms of sort of the networks through
communications they have a lot of
freedom they can access all kinds of
porn they can access before and lots of
parents don’t quite know what to do with
the fact that they can access that sort
of dodgy material that’s one sort of
form of freedom but increasingly
children are kept indoors they’re not
allowed to play out clearly that has an
impact on their mental health their
physical health their well-being their
ability to understand how communities
work and how to negotiate risk I think
the argument there is one but
nonetheless people don’t let their
children out like they should do terms
being thrown around like nature deficit
disorder that kind of thing in the UK
education system geographies under
threat in the u.s. geography in the u.s.
education system there isn’t geography
this sticker here is from the education
team who did an awesome work at National
Geographic and who I have the pleasure
to work with trying to make sure that
geography appears in the education
system in this country
geography is at the center of what
everyone does so so how can it not be
firmly in the curriculum it just doesn’t
make sense it has so many answers and
helps children to understand the world
around them so it’s like there’s a
conspiracy right we don’t want them to
understand and make these connections
between different things that somehow a
danger or a risk so I think children
have problems because they’re not
allowed to explore outdoors and when
they do go outdoors a lot of time they
probably make sense of it because
they’re not taught about it properly in
schools
I’ll be back in a moment some thinking
that I’m
is anyone here going to Everest in the
next few months
clearly Breann belongs there doesn’t say
we just need to think about the systems
in which we work and what works and
what’s right and just say what if what
if George were allowed to play out on
the street nor what if we blocked off
the street on a Sunday I asked parents
on my street sit on a Sunday let’s have
a couple of people it’s like a dead-end
street let’s have a cup of tea and then
to the street and let the kids play out
of 100 households 5 wanted to call the
police because they thought that it was
illegal to do that like they’re wrong
right and then another 10 so they said
well there aren’t any children on this
street and there are there’s lots of
children and then another group thought
that increased risk and this is this is
a brilliant example of where
geographical knowledge and understanding
is completely lost because if parents
understood the real risks of letting
their children play out then they’d let
their children play out if they
understood where the risk those were
from cars or from strangers if they had
the geographical understanding to
understand whether it was safe to get to
the park or not then maybe that their
children play out more they be allowed
to explore they be allowed to learn from
breaking a window or costing a worm in
half vital childhood experiences this is
guerrilla geography I didn’t recognize
this building this was I’m the US
Embassy in London and this was under the
Bush administration where it was
suggested that waterboarding was
completely fine so we thought that we’d
have an international waterboarding
Championships outside the US Embassy
but be clear ball games I don’t think
they’re like the maeín sort of form of
ball games being a sort of ball games
not allowed waterboarding completely
fine and it’s just using its using a
geographical principle street artists do
this a lot it’s about taking something
out of place and putting into another
place to make people think differently
about it so in an education context I
wouldn’t recommend waterboarding with
children it’s about saying you know any
any classroom environment involves
includes a teacher a learner an
environment and activity in a subject
how can we make any of those more
regular or irregular or quirky and sadly
you know this sort of sections called
geography teaching from the edge
geography is at the edge like the thing
that the whole planet and the universe
is about that’s at the edge and children
are allowed to play out and then it get
recess so the really informal radical
crazy thing would be to let children
learn by exploring outdoors like that’s
the radical thing right so guerrilla
isn’t really that guerrilla it’s kind of
asking for a bit of like sensible action
this is the thing I did first glow
action I did as a teacher and this is
I’m trying to represent an ecological
footprint by covering a football pitch
or several football pitches and bed
sheets and what this sort of showed was
the amount of biologically productive
land and resources that one of my pupils
needed to support their lifestyle over a
sustained period of time and it sparked
a big conversation because it’s about
scaling up that lesson is starting a
conversation with the community another
one of my projects that was mentioned
it’s about walking across cities in new
ways you know quite often
media organizations sometimes like the
exotic they like the extremes if you’re
going to visit Mexico City Mumbai you
visit the slums and the very wealthy
areas if you visit my city London you do
the same you don’t really visit the
ninety percent of the area which is a
fairly normal and this project was about
saying what if we walked across a city
take your photograph every eight steps
but the route being defined by trying to
represent deprivation for what it’s
really like in different areas rather
than by our own human biases and in this
case take your photograph every eight
steps and actually on this particular
walk one of my friends was taking on the
theme of plays that have got up on this
slide and decided to sort of take a
picture and actually to get to this
slide in his play park we had to cross
over this very busy highway and he
suffered an amazingly severe electric
shock because the Town Council had
decided that would be a really great
idea to put a play park not only between
two highways but with electric pylons
over the top as well
it’s geography right it’s like the lack
of geographical understanding
submission Explorer mission Explorer is
a project we started that’s all about
encouraging children to get outside and
be curious creative and critical I think
stem is really important but I think
that’s for the employer not necessarily
for the individual I think Georgia needs
have fun and play in the woods and we do
this project I would great support and
closely tied in with education team here
through a series of children’s books a
social gaming website which again the
education team here uses part of their
geography awareness week which is all
about giving children points and badges
for going off and doing missions in
generic and specific places we go places
like Glastonbury which is one of the
biggest and music festivals in the
country and when we do that we work with
children to make their own books they
become authors they become explorers
they learned that they are explorers
themselves and we recently got a
spaceship as well that’s my son and when
we taught the children what we save them
as G know what you are a space explorer
a time traveler spaceship you carry
ideas around with you you can move them
around you are a place maker you can
change places through your actions by
understanding issues like sustainability
we try to be inclusive in the way that
we work both in terms of gender
ethnicity in terms of disability to be
as inspiring as we can and this is all
about saying you know what you an
explorer experiment experience and
develop expertise in the world so things
like investigating murder of an animal
trying to find a lost cat trying to
cross a wood without touching the ground
measuring distance by having a roll
around who could find the most beautiful
poo is it really luckier if you walk
sort of outside a ladder rather than
under it and so on comparing the night
of wildlife to pollution in a river
questioning how pigs are treated when
you eat your food and they’re all
wrapped up many of those things and our
new book mission explore food which much
of its me available for free through
National Geographic education so the
last thing I’ll say is that geography is
really important there are some people
in this organization who think that
geography is a dirty word dirty
geographically speaking means something
that’s out of place geography isn’t out
of place it is place we
embrace it we must get bill to think
differently about what geography is and
I think that this is the institution to
really make that happen
you
so far and exploration is is so vital
and so important and for me very much so
exploration is a physical manifestation
of geography and what I’d like to take
you through is and what I think
geography is and what I call guerrilla
geography and hopefully maybe inspire
some of you to take part in in this
practice if you’re not already actually
doing it already and my background is as
a geographer educators a geography
teacher in the UK we’re fortunate enough
that all children have a geography
education but even in the UK
geography is in many ways misunderstood
damaged and marginalized both in the
media and by politicians which astounds
me and really what drove me to help
found the job food collective an
organization that I now work with which
is 35 people who worked creatively
together from primary school teachers
all the way up to university academics
it’s to re-engage people with geography
to make them think again about what it
means to be a geographer and to be proud
of the term and to reclaim it so first
of all um can anyone tell me what
geography is
ah you’ve you’ve heard me I love that
that’s fantastic for me geography is
anything that happens somewhere right
Hogwarts Middle Earth these are real
places in our imaginations and even
places which we say a real all we can do
is imagine those places not really real
by the time we think we know these
places they’ve changed we don’t really
know them anymore anyway which really
brings about sort of the idea well
what’s the point of geography if it’s
everything and I love this quote from
the band faithless you don’t need eyes
to see you need vision you know
geography and being a jogger fur being a
geographer it’s about a particular lens
it’s a viewpoint it’s a way of seeing
the world it’s in patterns and systems
it’s about making connections my wife is
currently in her second year of a PhD in
geography and she’s looking at how women
um have been detained in the UK prison
system after fleeing persecution in
other countries and looking at how their
relationship with home however they
conceptualize that impacts on their
mental health she shares a desk with
someone who works studying pollen in ice
cores to work out the effects of climate
change in the in the distant past I
think many of us in this room can make
the connection between the issues of
climate change and how detention and
refugees and the mental health and
well-being of people may be influenced
in the future you know you’ve seen these
massive connections so gorillas
geography
yeah gorilla geographers could study
gorillas like gorillas gorillas
geography is about thinking creatively
we need creative new solutions at a
political level at an educational level
but in many ways and a job for during
mass he talks about this there’s like a
hard shell of ideas in the legal system
in which we operate in the way that
businesses work and that’s fixed that’s
not moving there’s no crisis of need for
creativity in that area it feels people
subscribe to that yet in the environment
in tiger populations in all sorts of
wildlife situations in terms of climate
change we do face crises and gorillas
geography is about saying you know what
we need to think differently we need to
be creative about places and you start
seeing that already you see people in
campaigns working creatively and using
geographies of concept to achieve that
the occupation movement the word
occupation is a geographical term
guerilla gardeners are about changing
places for the better changing
environments in one way or another
street artists and so on so what are
things I’ve heard a lot which is kind of
bored me is this question of is
exploration dead has everywhere been
explored that’s such an old time
question because clearly everything is
always changing an exploration isn’t
just about the pioneers going off in
retrieving knowledge it’s about children
learning it’s about exploration being a
learning process it’s about searching
for questions and looking for answers in
this case finding a lost parrot finding
a lost sock
these are explorations that things that
everyday that all of us face that it
just as valid is important to the
individual maybe as things that feeling
feel far more exotic a far more distant
we’re all searching for answers where
are we going to die where are we gonna
live where we gonna go on a holiday
what’s our identity where are we from or
geographical ideas so guerrilla
geography is about encouraging people to
see the world differently it’s also
about encouraging people to think about
how the world see them and it’s also
about saying to children and to
ourselves that we make places we are
place makers it’s inevitable by the fact
that everyone
here we are making this place that we’re
in right now where you are you’re
shaping and making places whenever you
buy or consume something you hope to
shape or make a place elsewhere on the
planet when you get home as a teenager
and you speak to your parents and that
moment when you’re asked how was your
day you have the option to sort of prove
and walk up to your room and maybe have
a slightly sour household also ask your
parents you know how was your day and
give them a hug and that place then
becomes a very loving warming
environment maybe not in all households
but you know in some do we teach our
children to think about they look for
its own places at that scale that they
understand or do we want to form a
geography that’s like do you know what I
want you to imagine this distant place
it’s got absolutely nothing to do with
you and if you can’t put a pin on a map
to show what that place is or where it
is or things about it then clearly
you’re illiterate personally I’m
interested in emotional intelligence and
children that empathy their
understanding for these issues so this
illustration is done by the wonderful
Tom Morgan Jones who I work with in the
drug-free collective doing a sea of
children’s books and other things and
I’m going to come back to some of these
in a bit but my point in this slide
really is that children facing number
barriers when it comes to geography yes
in terms of sort of the networks through
communications they have a lot of
freedom they can access all kinds of
porn they can access before and lots of
parents don’t quite know what to do with
the fact that they can access that sort
of dodgy material that’s one sort of
form of freedom but increasingly
children are kept indoors they’re not
allowed to play out clearly that has an
impact on their mental health their
physical health their well-being their
ability to understand how communities
work and how to negotiate risk I think
the argument there is one but
nonetheless people don’t let their
children out like they should do terms
being thrown around like nature deficit
disorder that kind of thing in the UK
education system geographies under
threat in the u.s. geography in the u.s.
education system there isn’t geography
this sticker here is from the education
team who did an awesome work at National
Geographic and who I have the pleasure
to work with trying to make sure that
geography appears in the education
system in this country
geography is at the center of what
everyone does so so how can it not be
firmly in the curriculum it just doesn’t
make sense it has so many answers and
helps children to understand the world
around them so it’s like there’s a
conspiracy right we don’t want them to
understand and make these connections
between different things that somehow a
danger or a risk so I think children
have problems because they’re not
allowed to explore outdoors and when
they do go outdoors a lot of time they
probably make sense of it because
they’re not taught about it properly in
schools
I’ll be back in a moment some thinking
that I’m
is anyone here going to Everest in the
next few months
clearly Breann belongs there doesn’t say
we just need to think about the systems
in which we work and what works and
what’s right and just say what if what
if George were allowed to play out on
the street nor what if we blocked off
the street on a Sunday I asked parents
on my street sit on a Sunday let’s have
a couple of people it’s like a dead-end
street let’s have a cup of tea and then
to the street and let the kids play out
of 100 households 5 wanted to call the
police because they thought that it was
illegal to do that like they’re wrong
right and then another 10 so they said
well there aren’t any children on this
street and there are there’s lots of
children and then another group thought
that increased risk and this is this is
a brilliant example of where
geographical knowledge and understanding
is completely lost because if parents
understood the real risks of letting
their children play out then they’d let
their children play out if they
understood where the risk those were
from cars or from strangers if they had
the geographical understanding to
understand whether it was safe to get to
the park or not then maybe that their
children play out more they be allowed
to explore they be allowed to learn from
breaking a window or costing a worm in
half vital childhood experiences this is
guerrilla geography I didn’t recognize
this building this was I’m the US
Embassy in London and this was under the
Bush administration where it was
suggested that waterboarding was
completely fine so we thought that we’d
have an international waterboarding
Championships outside the US Embassy
but be clear ball games I don’t think
they’re like the maeín sort of form of
ball games being a sort of ball games
not allowed waterboarding completely
fine and it’s just using its using a
geographical principle street artists do
this a lot it’s about taking something
out of place and putting into another
place to make people think differently
about it so in an education context I
wouldn’t recommend waterboarding with
children it’s about saying you know any
any classroom environment involves
includes a teacher a learner an
environment and activity in a subject
how can we make any of those more
regular or irregular or quirky and sadly
you know this sort of sections called
geography teaching from the edge
geography is at the edge like the thing
that the whole planet and the universe
is about that’s at the edge and children
are allowed to play out and then it get
recess so the really informal radical
crazy thing would be to let children
learn by exploring outdoors like that’s
the radical thing right so guerrilla
isn’t really that guerrilla it’s kind of
asking for a bit of like sensible action
this is the thing I did first glow
action I did as a teacher and this is
I’m trying to represent an ecological
footprint by covering a football pitch
or several football pitches and bed
sheets and what this sort of showed was
the amount of biologically productive
land and resources that one of my pupils
needed to support their lifestyle over a
sustained period of time and it sparked
a big conversation because it’s about
scaling up that lesson is starting a
conversation with the community another
one of my projects that was mentioned
it’s about walking across cities in new
ways you know quite often
media organizations sometimes like the
exotic they like the extremes if you’re
going to visit Mexico City Mumbai you
visit the slums and the very wealthy
areas if you visit my city London you do
the same you don’t really visit the
ninety percent of the area which is a
fairly normal and this project was about
saying what if we walked across a city
take your photograph every eight steps
but the route being defined by trying to
represent deprivation for what it’s
really like in different areas rather
than by our own human biases and in this
case take your photograph every eight
steps and actually on this particular
walk one of my friends was taking on the
theme of plays that have got up on this
slide and decided to sort of take a
picture and actually to get to this
slide in his play park we had to cross
over this very busy highway and he
suffered an amazingly severe electric
shock because the Town Council had
decided that would be a really great
idea to put a play park not only between
two highways but with electric pylons
over the top as well
it’s geography right it’s like the lack
of geographical understanding
submission Explorer mission Explorer is
a project we started that’s all about
encouraging children to get outside and
be curious creative and critical I think
stem is really important but I think
that’s for the employer not necessarily
for the individual I think Georgia needs
have fun and play in the woods and we do
this project I would great support and
closely tied in with education team here
through a series of children’s books a
social gaming website which again the
education team here uses part of their
geography awareness week which is all
about giving children points and badges
for going off and doing missions in
generic and specific places we go places
like Glastonbury which is one of the
biggest and music festivals in the
country and when we do that we work with
children to make their own books they
become authors they become explorers
they learned that they are explorers
themselves and we recently got a
spaceship as well that’s my son and when
we taught the children what we save them
as G know what you are a space explorer
a time traveler spaceship you carry
ideas around with you you can move them
around you are a place maker you can
change places through your actions by
understanding issues like sustainability
we try to be inclusive in the way that
we work both in terms of gender
ethnicity in terms of disability to be
as inspiring as we can and this is all
about saying you know what you an
explorer experiment experience and
develop expertise in the world so things
like investigating murder of an animal
trying to find a lost cat trying to
cross a wood without touching the ground
measuring distance by having a roll
around who could find the most beautiful
poo is it really luckier if you walk
sort of outside a ladder rather than
under it and so on comparing the night
of wildlife to pollution in a river
questioning how pigs are treated when
you eat your food and they’re all
wrapped up many of those things and our
new book mission explore food which much
of its me available for free through
National Geographic education so the
last thing I’ll say is that geography is
really important there are some people
in this organization who think that
geography is a dirty word dirty
geographically speaking means something
that’s out of place geography isn’t out
of place it is place we
embrace it we must get bill to think
differently about what geography is and
I think that this is the institution to
really make that happen
you
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