Explore....and be paid...

If you have some free time this summer, you could follow in the footsteps of Robert MacFarlane, who has featured in this blog many times...
Visit the Wayfarer website for more details and to enter the competition....

We’re looking for someone who doesn’t mind getting their boots dirty, can string a sentence or two together and can get creative about how they share their journey with the world. You should already know your way around social networks and be able to produce short videos on your own. The winner will become our Wayfarer and will get paid to travel around the UK throughout July and August (so please only enter if you’ll be available all summer). You’ll visit some of the Old Ways paths, but, even better, you’ll strike out on your own and make some new discoveries, on or off the beaten path. You will then report back on your adventures through blog posts, photos, videos and tweets.

Looking forward to this book...

Coastal Erosion book

Lovely work by Jason Orton.

A book of photographs on coastal erosion which crumbles away before your eyes....
Is this an idea that could be adapted for use with students ?

Sense of Place

Some films have an amazing 'sense of place', and I've just watched one of them.
Powell and Pressburger have made several other films which are in my all-time-classics list, particularly 'A Canterbury Tale'.
This one is filmed in the Western Isles of Scotland, and is drenched in rainfall and blown by the gales...
Nice work by Roger Livesey...

Daniel Raven Ellison's TEDx Talk

Teaching about landscape should involve the encouragement of exploration.

Dan Raven Ellison, my friend and Geography Collective / Mission:Explore / Explorer HQ colleague was in Switzerland last month doing a TEDx talk on the theme of exploring...

This is well worth watching... Several ideas to use straight away.... particularly the idea of 'polar exploration'.

Richard Mabey

If students are going to be asked to write about the landscape, they should also be reading widely about the landscape, and the various influences that combine to create it.
One of the authors I've read (and re-read) quite a lot recently is Richard Mabey. He now has a website, with links through to books and other resources.
Worth checking out.

John Muir Trust Mission Booklet

For the last few months we've been working with the amazing folks at the John Muir Trust to put together a booklet of missions which marries the Mission:Explore style of missions to the aims of the trust, which are to encourage young people to experience the landscape, and care for wild places.
John Muir was the father figure of nature conservation, and quotes from him have been included to connect the missions with some of the ideas that he had over a century ago.
The resource is part of the celebrations for the Year of Natural Scotland, 2013

You can get to see the missions on this GRAPHICLY page. It will be available in other locations shortly, and I'll add the links to those as they emerge.

Here's a slide that I've used in many of my presentations...

Get out and about this Easter... and don't forget to take the opportunity to Mission:Explore...