I’m Daniel Raymond Allison and I’m a
guerilla geographer exploration is very
much the physical manifestation of
geography it’s doing geography it’s
about seeing the world in new ways but
also thinking about how people see you
in new ways as well my invitation to you
is to rethink how you engage with
geography to maybe think about becoming
a guerrilla geographer – thank you all
very much for coming it’s wonderful to
see you here I’m going to present an
idea to you it’s an idea that’s a work
in progress really this idea of
guerrilla geography some of it is
appropriate for adults some of it’s
appropriate for children some of it’s
appropriate for no one arguably but I’m
going to share it with you anyway for me
geography is really important
that’s what geography is to me really
important it’s really important to all
of us here and everyone around the world
yet despite its importance despite the
fact that it’s so important for well
trade for making such a climate change
in terms of all sorts of global
conflicts and problems despite the fact
it’s so useful for us when we’re trying
to decide where to live where to die
where to find someone to love despite
the fact that use for those things it’s
largely misunderstood damaged and
undervalued by many people within our
political classes and in school systems
and elsewhere and it’s almost like
there’s a conspiracy that exists that
people don’t want us to understand the
world as well as we could do but I also
say that actually for me geography is
anything that happens somewhere
everything that we know of happens
somewhere but though some ways aren’t
just sort of physical places that you
can visit with your with your body
they’re also imaginary places like
Hogwarts like middle-earth for many
people in this room Hogwarts will be a
more of a real place than New Zealand
yeah you know more about that place in
New Zealand so maybe hope
is more real to you than New Zealanders
and everywhere that is real is only
imagined anyway and always have a
different imagination or water places
like so for me this idea of imaginary
geographies is very important I’d like
you to sort of a hold that with you but
if geography is everything then the
question you have to ask is what’s it
useful for what’s the point in being a
geographer what’s the point in having a
subject which is geography and professor
David Lambert a teacher education UK
talks about how a job is a lens for
seeing the world for making sense of
things for spotting patterns for making
sense of things like at this week’s jog
for Awareness Week theme interdependence
you know the idea of everyone and
everything being interdependent upon
each other in one way or another it’s a
big complex idea and to unravel that we
need to learn about it this is a map by
an award-winning cartographer in
geographer Ben Henning and what he does
is he makes cartograms
so what he does is he takes different
continents or countries or land areas
and he inflates them according to a
different variable in this particular
case it’s looking at risk of storms and
you can see the United States as that
massive swelling thing up there and it’s
interesting because you know when you’re
trying to make a decision like shall we
cut FEMA
as a decision when you’re going to make
a decision about how you’re going to
deal with tsunami warnings maps like
these help to inform your
decision-making about where to make
those investments and it’s not just maps
like these that are useful it’s also
maps like this one the Anthropocene the
layer of the planet that is where we
live humans are influenced in this map
they’re the continents and countries
when inflated to show the number of
people who living in there and the veins
that run through them a different
transport systems that allow us to get
our food supplies to one another and for
me to be here and to be sharing ideas
with you and for me these show why
geography is not only so important but
so beautiful as well but jog rafi isn’t
just serious
I’m 32 I think I’m 32
and I’ve just started to try
skateboarding and I didn’t realize until
I started going on my son’s skateboard
how awful roads and paths are in my
country so on that on the far left here
is like near pristine perfect skate
country in terms of long boarding going
some increasingly terrible down towards
the far right which is just impenetrable
actually the one that’s second from
right is actually sort of like gravel
that’s full of glass where sort of car
had been smashed in and actually the
reflection for me was not only how town
planners had sort of completely
neglected the fact that anyone who’s
cycling or skateboarding might want a
landscape for other things but for the
people who are disabled any disabled
access also have to struggle because of
these small scale levels geographies and
these places where things are whether
you’re an advertising or transport or
food whatever your profession is where
is really important and it’s also true
of mushroom our cat just listen for this
is she beautiful she loves that cushion
on that chair for her that geography is
so important if you’re sat in that chair
she will claw you until she has that
chair to occupy that space to have that
territory is really really important
just zooming in a bit further now we’re
sort of started off at a global scale
and was sort of zooming in through these
scales these are my chubby hands and
what I’d like you to do this for a
moment is think of a scar or a tattoo or
a place it’s visible on your body that
you know that people could see and look
at as a memory attached to it because
when I see our bodies are like living
Maps right so on this where’s the
pointer honestly you see this here so
that’s a scar from falling off a
skateboard see that one there that’s a
scar from caught scar from carrying a TV
set into a classroom and then jarring
myself on a whiteboard and it sort of
just you know and I picked at it which
why I did that thing and that down there
is where when I was – I was – folding up
a deck chair and I cut my finger off and
that put ice cream and then a beside it
back on again and luckily it’s not a
proper joins that’s fine and then we all
know what this is here and I’ve got a
tattoo summer as well but I’ll leave
that to your imagination
all of us are bodies and maps and we can
think of our bodies as landscapes that
can be explored that is sensitive just
in the same way that landscapes physical
landscapes is constantly changing our
bodies are – and there’s a prejudice
within geography to course anything
makes big scales consonants borders
boundaries continental drift but
actually for young minds and maybe for
many people whose audience that’s not
quite so interesting as where you like
to be touched
zoomy an even further here’s a
photograph I took on bring my iPhone
with a little microscope I bought from
eight pounds from Amazon I’m so pleased
with it and that’s dirt on me and we now
sort of photograph my son’s nails
sometimes just to make him aware of how
really manky he’s being I would a
nine-year-old
but I’m short of make the point with
this that you can see these these these
valleys these hills these slopes you can
see a landscape within my skin so JA
grid’s about scale we zoomed in from
really big and important to really tiny
and really important which brings me on
nicely to sort of the next part of this
which specs proration
and for me exploration is very much the
physical manifestation of geography it’s
doing in geography and all of us here
are explorers being Explorer is
inevitable in our children’s books we
talk about the fact that we’re all space
explorers we’re time travelers we’re
spaceships all of us are those things
and those things can’t be taken away
from us and you know that the history of
large institutions like this is to maybe
focus a fair amount on what this
cartogram shows so this shows global
accessibility the places that are
largest the places which are hardest to
get to on the planet places like
Greenland and the Sahara Desert
the Himalayas and for me those places
are fascinating and beautiful and they
should be explored and discovered but
I’m also interested in the familiar this
here is a map of Bristol which is a city
in the West of England and I started
doing these walks these urban earth
walks as a project to represent cities
so in many ways when people think about
cities they tend to think of the
skyscrapers or the slums but the lived
experience for most people in cities is
is somewhere else in 2008 for the first
time in human history more people
started living in an urban and rural
places yet the idea being an urban
explorer the idea of walking across an
entire city seems in some ways more
strange or abstract than going for a
walk in the mountains so you know if my
friends went for a walk in the mountains
for a few days or walk in the
countryside
hardly worth a public conversation but
if I walk across this Bristol in a few
hours that’s somehow interesting despite
the fact it’s our habitat this way
slightly weird about that so I wanted to
do some walks which forced me to explore
cities in a way that would represent
them away from the guidebooks away from
the media agencies and get me to see a
city in anyway
so what I did was map the cities out
with with a collie called K from the
London School of Economics this
particular map shows deprivation within
the city and quintiles of deprivation no
idea is to walk across her city in this
case looking at the factory over
multiple deprivation staying within the
different colors to represent what that
city would be like so in this case
Bristol but this particular film here is
a walker did across Mexico City taking a
photograph every eight steps over 75
miles three days of walking as to give a
different vision a different view of the
city and what’s fascinating when you
when you take photographs like this is
not only do you create a resource and a
way for people to explore and see the
city in this particular case over a few
minutes rather than over a very long
period of time when you’re actually
physically doing the walk you you mourn
you mourn the things you don’t capture
through your photography normally when
you walk through a city you take
photographs of people or objects you’re
constantly scanning around looking for
things using this method you’re always
forced to photograph thought and for me
what I found it was most fascinating
about doing this project isn’t what you
see in the lens but it’s my sense of
loss for the things that I didn’t
photograph and my questioning of why it
is that I’m or not photographing those
things what is it about my upbringing
that meant that those things were more
interesting than what was darkly infront
the other thing that I found interesting
about making these there’s this sort of
type of film is the way that space
becomes the focused where you’re walking
into becomes the focus of a vision where
it’s things that normally again with
photographs are marginalized into the
pictures and in Mumbai literally people
living on the streets would appear in
the corners of the pictures and when I
tell people about walking across Mexico
City a fair few people go all dangerous
you say about walk across the city
people get sort of quite worried for you
the reality is that what we hear most in
stories and anecdotes is the bad stuff
people aren’t really programmed to tell
good news in the same way as they are to
program to say bad news so we hear bad
news a lot both from the
and from people if you walk across
Mexico City most people are really
friendly and really interested in what
you’re doing and I walked across a lot
of cities and I’ve only had a couple of
problems and one of the time was being
shouted at by a northern man in
Manchester who was just drunk and that
wasn’t really problem and the other time
was on this walk but the really
interesting story about that is that
there was a large group of sort of
female activists who were sort of hoping
to hold the community together and they
saw us coming where I was walking her in
a small group and they warned us and
they told us where to go so actually the
story wasn’t here’s the dodgy place the
story was that we were helped by people
to get across the city so then the next
kind of walk we started doing away from
urban earth walks a saint called an
urban story walk and this is where you
take a particular theme or a particular
issue and just focus on that so if you
imagine a landscape a physical landscape
with ridges and mountains and valleys
with this project she was saying right
well what if we looked at those ridges
and mountains and valleys not from a
land form physical point of view but
from a social cultural point of view in
this particular case city farmers helped
us with some mapping around violence and
this is sort of South London and it’s
reported violence so actually this parts
of town which probably experienced far
more violence than what’s on this map
within particular so Fe populations but
we’re walking through this place down
here it’s called Kingston you want to
think if in all those kinks you wouldn’t
think it’s particularly violent but they
had reports of violence he’ll cross his
pub and you could smell this pub like
within the centre of this area from
literally 20 metres of where you could
smell the bay I’ve never smelled a pub
420 marks 20 20 meters away and then we
turn the corner the the symbol for the
pub was a razorblade which was amazing a
particular place this this map which i
think is beautiful which almost looks
bruised shows depression in north london
and again in this particular one we
wanted to climb to the peaks these are
the peaks of the highest levels of
depression so we kind of walked across
the city staying in this sort of very
bruised area and it was as we expected
very very depressing in that particular
case so my last slide on exploration is
this one if all those things I just
showed you
explorations which anyone in this room
can go and do tonight tomorrow any day
you might want to choose your theme you
want my what to choose the city you walk
across but it’s saying that anyone who
can do this is a great example of that
this is a video of OpenStreetMap in
action and it’s seven hundred and fifty
thousand people making millions of edits
of mapping with GPS systems on their own
feet and what’s amazing about this is
it’s showing a collaborative open social
revolution in exploration and geography
where people themselves through a
creative commons process are taking
exploration on and literally map in the
world and in many places going to places
where other agencies have never been to
in disaster situations where no-one’s
done mapping before and it’s desperately
needed and for me this really sums up a
moment in exploration that’s taking
place right now one where the Power has
been taken away from a few and been
handed over to the many to us so
guerrilla geography and with all that so
excited feeds into this idea of
guerrilla geography so guerrilla
geography for me this idea and I’m very
open to having conversation with you
about this is creative alternative
radical strange exceptional alternative
geographies there might be that you’re
looking at a different kind of geography
or might be something you are doing
within geography that’s very different
in some way I’ve always been quite
fascinated by ecological footprints the
amount of land that’s needed to support
a community of people and so I wanted to
do think with the pupils in my school
and we got together several hundred bed
sheets and covered fields in bed sheets
to show the amount of biologically
productive land and resources that was
needed to support the lifestyle of one
average students in our school and it
worked out at about seven global
hectares so for anyone who’s not up with
what’s an ecological footprint is a good
way to imagine it as this if you are on
an island on your own how much land
would you need to give you all the stuff
you have but the thing is it’s been more
complex than that because the land may
include things like seal pups and
chocolate and a bit of coltan and all
these things which are obviously
fragmented all over the world
does anyone here heat seal pup it’s
possible anyway so all these things come
together so the actual landmass itself
is its fictional but despite that what
we did was sort of create this giant
footprint an American footprint so you
know would take up the extra field
further on as well you guys would need
that for the average we need that space
there as well someone in Bangladesh
would just need that sort of little area
there and the point is that there isn’t
enough resources to go around and
actually the world goes into ecological
debt a few months into the year because
we’re over consuming the amount of
biological productive resources are
available to us and then this happened
there’s a group of us had a campaign
called give geography its place and
essentially we were really angry because
no one called geography geography
there’s lots of really amazing media
that’s made that struggle fee but not
called geography we’re very cross I’m a
very cross that geography was
marginalized in the curriculum its
marginalized in schools in many parts of
the world geography isn’t even properly
taught in schools and so we would try to
think of some ways to sort of raise
awareness to this issue and we sort of
came across the idea of gorilla
geography and this was the very first
thing we did a few years ago this
policeman moves in the moment he’s bit
grumpy and actually that that these
security cameras are dud security
cameras there’s nothing in them and we
had a very clear rule as well when we’re
using them that we would only have the
security cameras in positions where we
could zoom in or out or pan where there
were actual security cameras around us
and all we were doing was drawing
people’s awareness to a geography that
existed within the landscape raising
that awareness through that particular
gorilla intervention in this case you
might recognize the building in the
background it was blown up in the recent
Bond movie we were drawing awareness to
extraordinary rendition and
waterboarding by holding in
international water boarding
championships and different key places
around London at a time when the Bush
administration was saying that
waterboarding was completely fine and so
we our point geographically was well you
know what you’re doing is completely
fine but in a private space so as
geographers we’re gonna take it out that
private place and put into a public
place and see how people think about it
for me it’s about teachers and learners
who are engaging your regular cure
critical and creative activities and
thinking and there might be the content
they’re doing or it might be how they’re
exploring on how they engaging with
things not suggesting people are
necessarily too naughty but thinking
about being creative about seeing the
world in new ways but also thinking
about how people can see you in new ways
as well thinking about how you go about
your lessons and school times so that
different things are unusual regular
formal unexpected or abnormal and that
be done with the teacher that learner
the environment or all those things so
one of my big projects I work with on
the drug for you collective is
Commission Explorer and it’s taking a
lot of these big ideas around guerrilla
geography and bring them into a way that
can be understood by by children and we
work on this a lot with our education
team here and if you go to the drug
field where this website you’ll see lots
of mission Explorer resources that you
can use for free and download for free
and we’ll develop them into a series of
children’s books website that is sort of
game affine so children come in points
and badges for going out on explorations
and doing guerrilla geography and we do
this at things like music festivals we
just started working with a travel
company could discover the world to
bring guerilla geography to the trips to
Iceland
we’ve on tour and visit schools and
places this is the back of our band so
when you open up the back it looks a bit
like a crazy explorers office as listing
some of our activities from our books
and there’s sort of missions and things
like this so I really love this
particular mission which is to try and
find a lost cat because there’s a
discrete geography to where cats go how
fast they travel what routes they take
what might have happened to them have
they been catnapped are they high on
catnip
have they been stolen by someone has it
been run over by a car and the reality
is that cats are found and it’s a great
piece of citizen science and citizen
geography to go and find and return a
pet but other missions and our books
include things like this to dress a
bunch of old people in hoodies and see
how people react to them
who can find the most beautiful poo to
measure from one place to another by
rolling around to try and cross a forest
without touching the ground which is
very hard to do in a conifer forest but
quite easy on a deciduous maybe is it
really unlucky to walk under ladders
that can be scientifically tested work
out the ratio for the amount of trash in
a river compared to the number of
mammals are the wildlife that was one of
the missions we worked to a National
Geographic here really my invitation to
you is to sort of rethink what drug for
years as a result maybe of seeing some
of this to rethink how you engage with
geography to maybe think about becoming
a guerrilla geographer – anyone can
become a guerrilla geographer everyone’s
an explorer and just say that geography
is beautiful it is important and it’s
really awesome and you know there’s some
people in society who who think that the
word geography is problematic that
geography doesn’t have value and we all
need to work together to help people
understand no actually
geography is of central importance and
we need to plan our our curriculum our
ideas how we think about our live spaces
or transport systems through this
amazing idea because if you were to pay
an organization to come up with the idea
of geography it would be a very very
very expensive thing to do that’s me
thank you very much
you
guerilla geographer exploration is very
much the physical manifestation of
geography it’s doing geography it’s
about seeing the world in new ways but
also thinking about how people see you
in new ways as well my invitation to you
is to rethink how you engage with
geography to maybe think about becoming
a guerrilla geographer – thank you all
very much for coming it’s wonderful to
see you here I’m going to present an
idea to you it’s an idea that’s a work
in progress really this idea of
guerrilla geography some of it is
appropriate for adults some of it’s
appropriate for children some of it’s
appropriate for no one arguably but I’m
going to share it with you anyway for me
geography is really important
that’s what geography is to me really
important it’s really important to all
of us here and everyone around the world
yet despite its importance despite the
fact that it’s so important for well
trade for making such a climate change
in terms of all sorts of global
conflicts and problems despite the fact
it’s so useful for us when we’re trying
to decide where to live where to die
where to find someone to love despite
the fact that use for those things it’s
largely misunderstood damaged and
undervalued by many people within our
political classes and in school systems
and elsewhere and it’s almost like
there’s a conspiracy that exists that
people don’t want us to understand the
world as well as we could do but I also
say that actually for me geography is
anything that happens somewhere
everything that we know of happens
somewhere but though some ways aren’t
just sort of physical places that you
can visit with your with your body
they’re also imaginary places like
Hogwarts like middle-earth for many
people in this room Hogwarts will be a
more of a real place than New Zealand
yeah you know more about that place in
New Zealand so maybe hope
is more real to you than New Zealanders
and everywhere that is real is only
imagined anyway and always have a
different imagination or water places
like so for me this idea of imaginary
geographies is very important I’d like
you to sort of a hold that with you but
if geography is everything then the
question you have to ask is what’s it
useful for what’s the point in being a
geographer what’s the point in having a
subject which is geography and professor
David Lambert a teacher education UK
talks about how a job is a lens for
seeing the world for making sense of
things for spotting patterns for making
sense of things like at this week’s jog
for Awareness Week theme interdependence
you know the idea of everyone and
everything being interdependent upon
each other in one way or another it’s a
big complex idea and to unravel that we
need to learn about it this is a map by
an award-winning cartographer in
geographer Ben Henning and what he does
is he makes cartograms
so what he does is he takes different
continents or countries or land areas
and he inflates them according to a
different variable in this particular
case it’s looking at risk of storms and
you can see the United States as that
massive swelling thing up there and it’s
interesting because you know when you’re
trying to make a decision like shall we
cut FEMA
as a decision when you’re going to make
a decision about how you’re going to
deal with tsunami warnings maps like
these help to inform your
decision-making about where to make
those investments and it’s not just maps
like these that are useful it’s also
maps like this one the Anthropocene the
layer of the planet that is where we
live humans are influenced in this map
they’re the continents and countries
when inflated to show the number of
people who living in there and the veins
that run through them a different
transport systems that allow us to get
our food supplies to one another and for
me to be here and to be sharing ideas
with you and for me these show why
geography is not only so important but
so beautiful as well but jog rafi isn’t
just serious
I’m 32 I think I’m 32
and I’ve just started to try
skateboarding and I didn’t realize until
I started going on my son’s skateboard
how awful roads and paths are in my
country so on that on the far left here
is like near pristine perfect skate
country in terms of long boarding going
some increasingly terrible down towards
the far right which is just impenetrable
actually the one that’s second from
right is actually sort of like gravel
that’s full of glass where sort of car
had been smashed in and actually the
reflection for me was not only how town
planners had sort of completely
neglected the fact that anyone who’s
cycling or skateboarding might want a
landscape for other things but for the
people who are disabled any disabled
access also have to struggle because of
these small scale levels geographies and
these places where things are whether
you’re an advertising or transport or
food whatever your profession is where
is really important and it’s also true
of mushroom our cat just listen for this
is she beautiful she loves that cushion
on that chair for her that geography is
so important if you’re sat in that chair
she will claw you until she has that
chair to occupy that space to have that
territory is really really important
just zooming in a bit further now we’re
sort of started off at a global scale
and was sort of zooming in through these
scales these are my chubby hands and
what I’d like you to do this for a
moment is think of a scar or a tattoo or
a place it’s visible on your body that
you know that people could see and look
at as a memory attached to it because
when I see our bodies are like living
Maps right so on this where’s the
pointer honestly you see this here so
that’s a scar from falling off a
skateboard see that one there that’s a
scar from caught scar from carrying a TV
set into a classroom and then jarring
myself on a whiteboard and it sort of
just you know and I picked at it which
why I did that thing and that down there
is where when I was – I was – folding up
a deck chair and I cut my finger off and
that put ice cream and then a beside it
back on again and luckily it’s not a
proper joins that’s fine and then we all
know what this is here and I’ve got a
tattoo summer as well but I’ll leave
that to your imagination
all of us are bodies and maps and we can
think of our bodies as landscapes that
can be explored that is sensitive just
in the same way that landscapes physical
landscapes is constantly changing our
bodies are – and there’s a prejudice
within geography to course anything
makes big scales consonants borders
boundaries continental drift but
actually for young minds and maybe for
many people whose audience that’s not
quite so interesting as where you like
to be touched
zoomy an even further here’s a
photograph I took on bring my iPhone
with a little microscope I bought from
eight pounds from Amazon I’m so pleased
with it and that’s dirt on me and we now
sort of photograph my son’s nails
sometimes just to make him aware of how
really manky he’s being I would a
nine-year-old
but I’m short of make the point with
this that you can see these these these
valleys these hills these slopes you can
see a landscape within my skin so JA
grid’s about scale we zoomed in from
really big and important to really tiny
and really important which brings me on
nicely to sort of the next part of this
which specs proration
and for me exploration is very much the
physical manifestation of geography it’s
doing in geography and all of us here
are explorers being Explorer is
inevitable in our children’s books we
talk about the fact that we’re all space
explorers we’re time travelers we’re
spaceships all of us are those things
and those things can’t be taken away
from us and you know that the history of
large institutions like this is to maybe
focus a fair amount on what this
cartogram shows so this shows global
accessibility the places that are
largest the places which are hardest to
get to on the planet places like
Greenland and the Sahara Desert
the Himalayas and for me those places
are fascinating and beautiful and they
should be explored and discovered but
I’m also interested in the familiar this
here is a map of Bristol which is a city
in the West of England and I started
doing these walks these urban earth
walks as a project to represent cities
so in many ways when people think about
cities they tend to think of the
skyscrapers or the slums but the lived
experience for most people in cities is
is somewhere else in 2008 for the first
time in human history more people
started living in an urban and rural
places yet the idea being an urban
explorer the idea of walking across an
entire city seems in some ways more
strange or abstract than going for a
walk in the mountains so you know if my
friends went for a walk in the mountains
for a few days or walk in the
countryside
hardly worth a public conversation but
if I walk across this Bristol in a few
hours that’s somehow interesting despite
the fact it’s our habitat this way
slightly weird about that so I wanted to
do some walks which forced me to explore
cities in a way that would represent
them away from the guidebooks away from
the media agencies and get me to see a
city in anyway
so what I did was map the cities out
with with a collie called K from the
London School of Economics this
particular map shows deprivation within
the city and quintiles of deprivation no
idea is to walk across her city in this
case looking at the factory over
multiple deprivation staying within the
different colors to represent what that
city would be like so in this case
Bristol but this particular film here is
a walker did across Mexico City taking a
photograph every eight steps over 75
miles three days of walking as to give a
different vision a different view of the
city and what’s fascinating when you
when you take photographs like this is
not only do you create a resource and a
way for people to explore and see the
city in this particular case over a few
minutes rather than over a very long
period of time when you’re actually
physically doing the walk you you mourn
you mourn the things you don’t capture
through your photography normally when
you walk through a city you take
photographs of people or objects you’re
constantly scanning around looking for
things using this method you’re always
forced to photograph thought and for me
what I found it was most fascinating
about doing this project isn’t what you
see in the lens but it’s my sense of
loss for the things that I didn’t
photograph and my questioning of why it
is that I’m or not photographing those
things what is it about my upbringing
that meant that those things were more
interesting than what was darkly infront
the other thing that I found interesting
about making these there’s this sort of
type of film is the way that space
becomes the focused where you’re walking
into becomes the focus of a vision where
it’s things that normally again with
photographs are marginalized into the
pictures and in Mumbai literally people
living on the streets would appear in
the corners of the pictures and when I
tell people about walking across Mexico
City a fair few people go all dangerous
you say about walk across the city
people get sort of quite worried for you
the reality is that what we hear most in
stories and anecdotes is the bad stuff
people aren’t really programmed to tell
good news in the same way as they are to
program to say bad news so we hear bad
news a lot both from the
and from people if you walk across
Mexico City most people are really
friendly and really interested in what
you’re doing and I walked across a lot
of cities and I’ve only had a couple of
problems and one of the time was being
shouted at by a northern man in
Manchester who was just drunk and that
wasn’t really problem and the other time
was on this walk but the really
interesting story about that is that
there was a large group of sort of
female activists who were sort of hoping
to hold the community together and they
saw us coming where I was walking her in
a small group and they warned us and
they told us where to go so actually the
story wasn’t here’s the dodgy place the
story was that we were helped by people
to get across the city so then the next
kind of walk we started doing away from
urban earth walks a saint called an
urban story walk and this is where you
take a particular theme or a particular
issue and just focus on that so if you
imagine a landscape a physical landscape
with ridges and mountains and valleys
with this project she was saying right
well what if we looked at those ridges
and mountains and valleys not from a
land form physical point of view but
from a social cultural point of view in
this particular case city farmers helped
us with some mapping around violence and
this is sort of South London and it’s
reported violence so actually this parts
of town which probably experienced far
more violence than what’s on this map
within particular so Fe populations but
we’re walking through this place down
here it’s called Kingston you want to
think if in all those kinks you wouldn’t
think it’s particularly violent but they
had reports of violence he’ll cross his
pub and you could smell this pub like
within the centre of this area from
literally 20 metres of where you could
smell the bay I’ve never smelled a pub
420 marks 20 20 meters away and then we
turn the corner the the symbol for the
pub was a razorblade which was amazing a
particular place this this map which i
think is beautiful which almost looks
bruised shows depression in north london
and again in this particular one we
wanted to climb to the peaks these are
the peaks of the highest levels of
depression so we kind of walked across
the city staying in this sort of very
bruised area and it was as we expected
very very depressing in that particular
case so my last slide on exploration is
this one if all those things I just
showed you
explorations which anyone in this room
can go and do tonight tomorrow any day
you might want to choose your theme you
want my what to choose the city you walk
across but it’s saying that anyone who
can do this is a great example of that
this is a video of OpenStreetMap in
action and it’s seven hundred and fifty
thousand people making millions of edits
of mapping with GPS systems on their own
feet and what’s amazing about this is
it’s showing a collaborative open social
revolution in exploration and geography
where people themselves through a
creative commons process are taking
exploration on and literally map in the
world and in many places going to places
where other agencies have never been to
in disaster situations where no-one’s
done mapping before and it’s desperately
needed and for me this really sums up a
moment in exploration that’s taking
place right now one where the Power has
been taken away from a few and been
handed over to the many to us so
guerrilla geography and with all that so
excited feeds into this idea of
guerrilla geography so guerrilla
geography for me this idea and I’m very
open to having conversation with you
about this is creative alternative
radical strange exceptional alternative
geographies there might be that you’re
looking at a different kind of geography
or might be something you are doing
within geography that’s very different
in some way I’ve always been quite
fascinated by ecological footprints the
amount of land that’s needed to support
a community of people and so I wanted to
do think with the pupils in my school
and we got together several hundred bed
sheets and covered fields in bed sheets
to show the amount of biologically
productive land and resources that was
needed to support the lifestyle of one
average students in our school and it
worked out at about seven global
hectares so for anyone who’s not up with
what’s an ecological footprint is a good
way to imagine it as this if you are on
an island on your own how much land
would you need to give you all the stuff
you have but the thing is it’s been more
complex than that because the land may
include things like seal pups and
chocolate and a bit of coltan and all
these things which are obviously
fragmented all over the world
does anyone here heat seal pup it’s
possible anyway so all these things come
together so the actual landmass itself
is its fictional but despite that what
we did was sort of create this giant
footprint an American footprint so you
know would take up the extra field
further on as well you guys would need
that for the average we need that space
there as well someone in Bangladesh
would just need that sort of little area
there and the point is that there isn’t
enough resources to go around and
actually the world goes into ecological
debt a few months into the year because
we’re over consuming the amount of
biological productive resources are
available to us and then this happened
there’s a group of us had a campaign
called give geography its place and
essentially we were really angry because
no one called geography geography
there’s lots of really amazing media
that’s made that struggle fee but not
called geography we’re very cross I’m a
very cross that geography was
marginalized in the curriculum its
marginalized in schools in many parts of
the world geography isn’t even properly
taught in schools and so we would try to
think of some ways to sort of raise
awareness to this issue and we sort of
came across the idea of gorilla
geography and this was the very first
thing we did a few years ago this
policeman moves in the moment he’s bit
grumpy and actually that that these
security cameras are dud security
cameras there’s nothing in them and we
had a very clear rule as well when we’re
using them that we would only have the
security cameras in positions where we
could zoom in or out or pan where there
were actual security cameras around us
and all we were doing was drawing
people’s awareness to a geography that
existed within the landscape raising
that awareness through that particular
gorilla intervention in this case you
might recognize the building in the
background it was blown up in the recent
Bond movie we were drawing awareness to
extraordinary rendition and
waterboarding by holding in
international water boarding
championships and different key places
around London at a time when the Bush
administration was saying that
waterboarding was completely fine and so
we our point geographically was well you
know what you’re doing is completely
fine but in a private space so as
geographers we’re gonna take it out that
private place and put into a public
place and see how people think about it
for me it’s about teachers and learners
who are engaging your regular cure
critical and creative activities and
thinking and there might be the content
they’re doing or it might be how they’re
exploring on how they engaging with
things not suggesting people are
necessarily too naughty but thinking
about being creative about seeing the
world in new ways but also thinking
about how people can see you in new ways
as well thinking about how you go about
your lessons and school times so that
different things are unusual regular
formal unexpected or abnormal and that
be done with the teacher that learner
the environment or all those things so
one of my big projects I work with on
the drug for you collective is
Commission Explorer and it’s taking a
lot of these big ideas around guerrilla
geography and bring them into a way that
can be understood by by children and we
work on this a lot with our education
team here and if you go to the drug
field where this website you’ll see lots
of mission Explorer resources that you
can use for free and download for free
and we’ll develop them into a series of
children’s books website that is sort of
game affine so children come in points
and badges for going out on explorations
and doing guerrilla geography and we do
this at things like music festivals we
just started working with a travel
company could discover the world to
bring guerilla geography to the trips to
Iceland
we’ve on tour and visit schools and
places this is the back of our band so
when you open up the back it looks a bit
like a crazy explorers office as listing
some of our activities from our books
and there’s sort of missions and things
like this so I really love this
particular mission which is to try and
find a lost cat because there’s a
discrete geography to where cats go how
fast they travel what routes they take
what might have happened to them have
they been catnapped are they high on
catnip
have they been stolen by someone has it
been run over by a car and the reality
is that cats are found and it’s a great
piece of citizen science and citizen
geography to go and find and return a
pet but other missions and our books
include things like this to dress a
bunch of old people in hoodies and see
how people react to them
who can find the most beautiful poo to
measure from one place to another by
rolling around to try and cross a forest
without touching the ground which is
very hard to do in a conifer forest but
quite easy on a deciduous maybe is it
really unlucky to walk under ladders
that can be scientifically tested work
out the ratio for the amount of trash in
a river compared to the number of
mammals are the wildlife that was one of
the missions we worked to a National
Geographic here really my invitation to
you is to sort of rethink what drug for
years as a result maybe of seeing some
of this to rethink how you engage with
geography to maybe think about becoming
a guerrilla geographer – anyone can
become a guerrilla geographer everyone’s
an explorer and just say that geography
is beautiful it is important and it’s
really awesome and you know there’s some
people in society who who think that the
word geography is problematic that
geography doesn’t have value and we all
need to work together to help people
understand no actually
geography is of central importance and
we need to plan our our curriculum our
ideas how we think about our live spaces
or transport systems through this
amazing idea because if you were to pay
an organization to come up with the idea
of geography it would be a very very
very expensive thing to do that’s me
thank you very much
you
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