Otherworlds: geographical explorations

Eduation without rebellion - what's the point of that?

noreply@blogger.com (Sara) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 14:07:00 +0000

As George Ritzer said in an interview in 2002, Universities today are designed not to give students the freedom to think for themselves: 'Students don't want to talk to me about ideas,' he said, 'only about grades'.

Otherworlds is long dead as a course, but it was founded on the principle that it is the thinking that matters, not the grades. At the end of the first lecture I gave on that course a student came to me and said 'What is the key thing we will learn if we take this course'. My answer was simple: 'To think'.

I didn't want to impart facts and 'knowledge' or even to 'educate', I wanted to get each individual student thinking about how they might go out into the world and find things out for themselves in unique and radical new ways that said more about their true human condition than their grade average would at the end of the term. I wanted to wake them up.

Naive perhaps, but I can't be alone in thinking learning should be about something more than getting grades to fit into the best paid jobs. What about learning to live a life which might question and challenge the structures which deny individual freedoms, the structures which give all to the few and nothing to the masses...? The very structures which now govern the educational establishments, which might once have given a few lucky individuals a critical edge to get them thinking there might just be a better way...

Words on Otherworlds

noreply@blogger.com (Sara) — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 12:35:00 +0000

I miss our regular two hours of confusion on a Tuesday morning. And what is sadder still is that you were the only cohort to experience, learn from and endure Otherworlds. For soon I am to leave Manchester for pastures new and Otherworlds will be disappearing with me. By the time this year's intake of freshers reach the dizzy heights of the 3rd year, Otherworlds will be but a dim and distant memory.

But on the bright side, rumours are correct, Craig and I are currently drafting a paper on our experiences of Otherworlds and you can look forward to publication in a suitably learned scholarly journal at some stage in the not too distant future (publishing timescales allowing). You will all be acknowledged, for you all helped to make the experience what it was.

I read an interesting article recently in the Times Higher (28 September, 46-47 'Ready to furnish tools of thought'). A piece urging lecturers to be more critical, reflexive and creative in the way they teach - indeed encouraging us to involve the students in the knowledge-making process. Everything Ms Swain said read to me like the basics of what any lecturer should already be doing, and it sadenned me to think how rarely students really engage in the knowledge-making process today. So who knows, if nobody else is taking on the challenge, I may one day have to return to spread the Otherworlds word, or it may come to a bookshelf near you, for students of the future to challenge the sausage factory and stake their claim for the right to critical pedagogy! :) (If it is posible to confine the monster that is Otherworlds to the pages of a book that is, I am no Hagrid...).

The final curtain...

noreply@blogger.com (Sara) — Tue, 29 May 2007 09:12:00 +0000

And so the end is near - you are all nervously biting the ends of biros and flicking through what seem like random, incoherent and meaningless notes (and I realise that is my fault and not yours). So take a few moments to read through the Final Team's posting below. It should hopefully spark off a Eureka moment for some of you who are still struggling to experience it.

Despite the heartaches and misunderstandings, I hope you have enjoyed Otherworlds and all that it tried to bring to you. I certainly enjoyed the challenge and have learnt more from you as a group of students than I have learnt from any of my students in the past. And if the world is to develop and change, rather than endlessly re-create itself in the same image, learning something from students should be a key part of what any academic does. And one day, you will realise that there was a benefit from being put in the teacher's shoes for a term.

Good luck to everyone in the exam. I will be keeping my fingers crossed for you all, and hope to see you outside the Ducie afterwards for the End of Year BBQ. In the meantime if you are getting stressed out take some tips from here to calm those nerves.

May the force be with you in whatever you choose to do with the rest of your lives. And remember - you create your world, so make it a good one!

Sara

...a few words of reflection

noreply@blogger.com (Craig Jones) — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:41:00 +0000

Hello All,

Firstly let us apologize for this late blogging. This was due in part to our plan to subvert the blog, but there is a time and a place for everything and we have an exam to pass! Sorry.

In fact that might be a good place to start: ‘there is a time and place for everything’. We would beg to differ and a central message of our learning experience was to demonstrate that there need not be specific times and particular places for anything. Rather, places are what we make, imagine and perceive them to be and time can be spent, filled and taken in any way we (and others) choose. Our learning experience may have seemed bizarre, or perhaps even messy and unorganised. So this might clear a few things up, but you should not be expecting answers from us; instead we encourage you to ask questions and specifically questions about the Otherworlds course and the student-led learning experiences.

We were concerned for we had heard criticism about the course from some of you (and we include ourselves). Some of us thought the course – because of its different nature (to understate) – was incoherent, difficult and unstable in subject matter. Our group was interested in why some of us felt like that and decided to pursue exactly this in our learning experience. Some things struck us about the learning experiences. The parameters of the learning experience were wide open and we had only two considerations: to do something of geographical relevance and to include some learning theories. By anyone’s standards this was a flexible course. Compare your other courses: Labour Geographies, 3000 words on the workers lot in a particular company; Critical Development, 3000 words on a development issue in a chosen region with a set scale; General Paper, 3000 words of a book review…Be critical. Think back to first year when we were compelled to learn Foreign Direct Investment statistics, read textbooks, remember dates and names. And to your A-levels and school; what did you learn?

For a lot of us I think it is fair to say that we ‘receive an education’, and this is very different to participating in education. A lot of our learning has, to the very present day, been centred around a very orthodox educational relationship (or ‘pedagogy’); that of the teacher-student. Like those dichotomies we see everyday – think nature-culture, man-woman – we take the fact that teachers (and lectures) teach and students learn, as a given. But what happens when that role is reversed? What, in other words, happens when students are seen not as recipients of knowledge, but as makers and creators of it? Well, Otherworlds is what happens! We all had the chance to ‘be the teachers’ and we all did so in a variety of different ways and with very different topics. How then, is it fair to voice criticism at Otherworlds? We were its creators; literally half of the course was ‘ours’ and we could do with it what we pleased. Now I think there is something very interesting in all of this; a paradox.

We could have united and decided to bring the course ‘together’, we could have made it coherent and even fixed its subject matter. Why didn’t we? That much is obvious; it would have been boring and we wanted to push the boundaries. Does this mean then that we embraced Otherworlds, did our learning experiences show us ‘otherways’ to learning? I would like to think so. However, while we wanted to explore otherworlds we somehow limited ourselves. The parameters were wide open yet our learning experiences remained largely within the classroom, most of us used PowerPoint’s and we placed a lot of emphasis on the spoken word and the visual. Why? This is one of the questions that I would like you to consider, and if you don’t agree with the proposition that our learning experiences were restricted then that’s fair enough but be prepared to argue your case. I think there are some illuminating points to this question to be found if we look at the way we learn. Most of us don’t think twice about what and how we learn, we just do it; read the book make notes; listen to the lecturer, take notes (even if we don’t understand or think it is boring). Writing essays? Do many of us write what we want to, or what we feel we should, or do we write to tick boxes that will get us the best marks?

Academia and university is about learning. It is about learning what we want to learn, and taking from it what we choose. Many of the courses that we have been taught over the last three years have not offered the opportunity to explore topics as and how we wish. When it comes to actually doing it, its scary, we are not accustomed to ‘being the teachers’ nor are we attuned to picking our own geographical topics and teaching methods. So we err on the side of caution, we give out handouts, use PowerPoints (that’s what ‘real’ lecturers do) involve the audience a bit (it seems rude not too) and have clear introductions and conclusions. I am not saying this is a bad thing, but when we are given the opportunity to do anything I find it interesting that we restrict ourselves and I think we do this because of the way we have been taught; our pedagogical conditioning tells us so and therefore it must be right.

So think back to our learning experience, and think about how we took on-board the above. Think about the bizarre postulations from Mike about spirituality and geography and Adams linkage of the big-bang to the love that we humans feel. The drums, the videos, Mike’s ‘David Attenborough’ voice-over and closing your eyes; these were all attempts to embody an unconventional pedagogy and push further the boundaries which others before us had began to push. If you really reflect on your own earning experience – and be critical – and relate your topics and methods to other learning experiences then you may find answers about pedagogy and how it helps shape us.

What is written here is deliberately ambiguous and it is intended to get you thinking about a few things in the final few days before the exam. Remember it is not always about finding answers, but is about learning to ask the right questions.

For some critical pedagogy theory check out Freire ‘pedagogy of the oppressed’

If there are any questions, write them below.

Prepare well friends for there are but a few days left.

Adam, Mike, Chris and Craig

Postscript thought: If there is a time and place for everything, try doing something that is not ‘normal’ at an unusual time or unexpected place. See what happens. Moments of jouissance can occur and these can alter the path of your (and others) day; the mundane becomes beautiful.

Pioneering the Geographies of Beauty: A Recap...

noreply@blogger.com (Helen) — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 13:54:00 +0000

Thanks for everyone who participated in our presentation last Tuesday. We hope we provided some further food for thought on how Geography can be applied to unconventional subjects, such as Beauty. Here is a recap of the main arguments proposed in our presentation...

Cultural variations of what defines 'beauty' do exist. We gave examples of pale skin in the Far East and tanned skin in Western Europe to represent wealth in both cases. Also, how over time our preferences are changing in relation to mass media influences, such as curvy female figures of the 1950s (Marilyn Monroe) and size 0 models of today.

We also argued that despite these cultural influences on what defines 'beauty', there are underlying features that all persons perceive as attractive, eg. symmetrical facial features, wide eyes, full lips, overall youthful appearance

Traditional English views of beauty as pale and 'white' justified slavery; 'Black' was seen as 'ugly' and inferior. This arguably continues today as we showed in our examples of Latin American and North American Beauty Pageants.

Fairytales continue the 'Feminine Beauty Ideal' today and porpagate the idea that beauty, especially feminine beauty, equals success (feminist perspective).

The Beauty Salon can be seen as a liberating space; making beauty available to all. It can also be viewed as a theraputic landscape. However, it can also be viewed as exploitative of people's insecurities about their appearance.

The international success of Ugly Betty contests the notion of the 'Beauty Myth' (Wolf).

Virtual Beauties, eg. airbrushing in popular media are creating an ideal of beauty that is unattainable to the vast majority of the population.

We hope that we've reminded you of the different worlds produced by beauty. We appreciated all the questions and comments put forward after our presentation, they were insightful and really helped us evaluate our presentation. We noticed, however, that one main point was drawn from our presentation, that of beauty as liberating, but we hope that this blog will remind you that that was not the main message; we wanted to show you all the different worlds of beauty, including those which exclude not only liberate.

Referring to the table at the top of the page, these are the results from the activity in which we asked you to rate the nine photos.

General findings showed that people tended to rate the pictures in similar categories to one another. Therefore, enforcing the idea that people share similar ideas on how they perceive beauty.

Hope you enjoyed it! Good Luck in the exam everyone!

Helen, Vicky and Angela.

References:

Baker-Sperry , L. and Grauerholz, L. (2003) The Pervasiveness and Persistence of the Feminine Beauty Ideal in Children’s Fairytales, Gender and Society, vol.15 (5), pp: 711-726

Biddle, J. & Hamermesh, D. S. (1993) ‘Beauty and the Labour Market’. NBER working paper No. w4518

Black, P. & Sharma, U. (2001) ‘Men are Real, Women are Made up: Beauty Therapy and the construction of Femininity’. Sociological Review. Issue 1 Vol. 49 pp100-116.

Black, P. (2004) ‘The Beauty Industry: Gender, Culture, Pleasure’. Routledge: London.

Featherstone, M. (2003) ‘Body Modification’. Sage: London.

Jordan, W. (1968) White Over Black: American attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812, University of North Carolina Press; Chapel Hill.

Ossman, S. (2002) ‘Three Faces of Beauty: Casablanca, Paris, Cairo’. Duke University Press: London.

Simpson, T. (2007) ‘The Hidden Beauty of Ugly Betty’. Daily Mail [on-line] accessed 11.01.07 available from; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=427992&in_page_id=1879

Sarwer, D. B., Grossbart, T. A., Didie, E. R. (2003) Beauty and Society, Seminars in Cutaneous Medicine and Surgery, Vol. 22(2) pp: 79-92

Wolf, N.. (1991). The beauty myth. Doubleday: New York

Spaces of Colour: Feeling blue or are you red faced?

noreply@blogger.com (Spaces of Colour) — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 13:38:00 +0000

We're all Geographers and stereotypically we're all very good at colouring in, but do you think about what colours you're using?

Our senses play an important role in our everyday experience, providing us with information about the world. Colour as sensed through sight, is just one way of looking at our experiences of everyday life.

“The idea of colour may initially seem a highly simple one, however it can be explored in various different ways due to the different meanings it conjures up” (Lamb and Bourriau, 1995)

Through the colour of red, we transformed the lecture theatre into an otherworld that hopefully conjured up different feelings... Intimacy? Passion? Rage? Anger? Or did you feel threatened? This experience was then contrasted with bathing our learning space in blue, complemented by Miles Davis, demonstrating the associations of colour with other senses.

Our relationship and associations with colour may be explained by semiotic theory, perception theory and classical conditioning. Explanations of these are all available on your handout (hope it's helpful!).

Feeling Blue..?
Colours have different effects on us emotionally, they are
consciously used to create different environments. Colour therapy uses the seven colours of the spectrum to balance the body’s energy centres (Chakras) and also helps to stimulate the body’s own healing process. In relation to geography the most immediate and felt geography is that of the body. It is the site of experience and expression:

“We live in worlds of pain or of pleasure” (Davidson and Milligan, 2004)

Artists and Colour
Perceptual Colour and Pictorial Colour. Perceptual is often sub-conscious associations whereas Pictorial is deliberately used to create a mood or feeling e.g. Van Goghs Night Cafe.

Colour Cross Culturally
Universal colour associations may be those associated with the elements e.g red= fire= heat. Or those associted with companies and branding e.g. Coca Cola= Red.

Regional or National differences in colour persist e.g. White in western countries being associated with marriage and purity whereas red is the Hindu counterpart.

"The connection of meaning and colour seems obvious, natural nearly; on the other hand it seems idiosyncratic, unpredictable and anarchic” (Kress and Leeuwen, 2002 p343)

Keep those Colouring Pencils sharpened!
Laura, Sascha, Sophie and Miranda.

The good, the bad and the memory: An overview

noreply@blogger.com (Kim) — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 13:39:00 +0000

Despite the time lapse since our presentation we hope you may have spent some time contemplating the role of memories in the construction of places and we hope this comes as a reminder to trigger such thought!

The aims central to our discussion are as follows:

To discuss whether memories make place or place makes memories
To assess the difference between good and bad memories and their association with place

If you missed our lecture the other week we got all of the theoretical background out of the way and defined place and memory before exploring the above aims within a Jeremy Kyle style chat show. This highlighted how personal interpretation of such ideas results in a variety of perspectives and answers. From such analysis/discussion we discovered the following:

1. That stereotypical ideas of good and bad memories exist. Differences were found here in the application of such memories with good memories being commonly associated with places (e.g. the beach, the home, a night out) while bad memories tend to focus more on an action or experience (Being attacked, a crash, being ill).

'Another Place' by Antony Gormley. Artwork on a Merseyside beach - not only a common idea of a 'happy place' but also making connections between man and the landscape.

2. Significant gender patterns were also discovered within the literature and our own research. Here females commonly thought that the memories created the place with literature suggesting this to be due to their more emotional state. Conversely, males believed that the place was more significant in creating a memory, with a day watching football at a stadium being one of the common examples used.

3. The concluding point here however was that the emphasis of memory in constructing a place differs greatly depending on the individual, their background and the experiences they have had.

We hope our contribution was thought provoking and we have included a few references for those who wish to explore these ideas further.

Kim, Sam, Sarah R, Sarah H and Matt.

•Adams, S., Kueblie, J., Bayle, P. A. and Fivush, R. (1995) ‘Gender differences in Parent-child conversations about past emotions: A longitudinal Investigation’, Sex roles, 33, 309-323.

•Bluck, S. (2003) ‘Autobiographical memory: Exploring its functions in everyday life’, Memory, 11, 113-123.

•Knez, I. (2006) ‘Autobiographical memories for places’, Memory, 14, 359-377.

•Said, E.W. (2000) Intention, Memory and Place. Critical Inquiry 26(2) pp. 175-192.

•Twigger-Ross, C. L. and Uzzel, D. L. (1996) ‘Place and identity processes’, Journal of Environmental Psychology, 16, 205-220.

'Geographers are mystics': the beauty of emancipated sausages

noreply@blogger.com (Sara) — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 11:20:00 +0000

Spaces of beauty and spirituality all woven together to the beat of a bongo drum. What a way to kick off a Tuesday morning, and what a perfect end to Series 1 of the Otherworlds student activities. Thank you to everyone who has taken this opportunity to think outside the box: and well done to those of you who decided not just to take a tentative look outside that box, but wholeheartedly made a leap for it, feet first into the great unknown. Let's hope we see Series 2 running so successfully next year.

The first group today suggested beauty can be a cause for liberation. The second group argued critical engagement with education can be empowering and emancipatory. We may not all be able to obtain some elusive universal image of beauty to liberate us in the consumer driven society of the spectacle, but we can all grab any opportunity for learning with both hands and break out of the sausage factory... or at least add our own unique spice and flavour to the recipe.

As the group said, the course is indeed sculpted by each and every one of you, which gives you a unique opportunity to take geography wherever you want it to go. I hope you enjoyed your roles as sculptors, and that you have found the journey as much fun as I have. Mike's definition of geography as a spiritual process bothered some - but his reason for defining it in this way is spot on - geography is about "trying to figure out things that are bigger than yourself". Otherworlds has given you an opportunity to be in the driving seat of that figuring-out process.

If there is a 'universal beauty' to be had - then I think we saw it in action on the grass outside Mansfield Cooper in the sunshine this morning. Go forth and search for unity, emancipated sausages, and as Craig said - where critical pedagogy isn't up for grabs, you should fight for it!!

Groetjes uit Amsterdam

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 20:38:00 +0000

Hi Otherworlders,

For when I were back Sarah asked me to write something on the blog, some reflections on my time at Manchester, the Otherworlds course and what it's like being back home. The first two weeks I didn’t have time for that, I found out that you can be very busy with being back. After that I had to start my (something like a) dissertation, I had a lot to do immediately after I got back. But now I’m kind of settled again, and ready to write something about how it was for me being there where you are all now, and how it is back here, in my ‘old’ world again.

The most striking for me was that it felt like I had never left. That was already that way after a day or two. You just continue the things you did six months ago with the same people, like Manchester never happened. I almost started questioning the point of leaving, but luckily there are always the pictures, about 2000 of them. I was watching them last week and realised that I learnt a lot and met a lot of great people. This week I started thinking more and more about Manchester. Some people that I would like to meet up with, shops and cafes where I would like to go, and then you realise that that’s not possible at the moment. Finally I started to miss Manchester, even breakfasts at OP.

I really enjoyed my courses, inspiring teachers like Michael Bradford, Mark Jayne and off course Sara. Otherworlds was interesting, something different, but it also reminded me why I quit art school (did I really sleep with an unread book under my pillow?). It was also the only course where I met some other people than just international students. Being an international student it is very easy to get in contact with other international students, but it is more difficult to get in contact with you: the English student. No offence of course, but you’re not the most open society in the world, I actually can’t tell you if it is anything different in the Netherlands, maybe we’re the same. It was also a pity that the first semester ended so early, you don’t have a lot of time to meet people at the Uni, before you know it, the Chistmas break is there (in Holland that’s only 2 weeks) and that’s it for the lectures.

Manchester was great, loved the city centre, the shops, the Northern Quarter. Learned a lot at the university, also that deadlines can be real deadlines (that’s different in Amsterdam). Fallowfield started to feel like home in the end, although if I’m ever going live in Manchester again I think I would prefer another area. The sense of fashion of a large part of the female population I found ‘interesting’ (don’t you English people get cold? Tights and coats are a great invention!), but also a large part of you have a better sense of fashion than the Dutch people. And I think that interesting is also word I would use for your love of green peas, white beans, bacon and deep frying. What I miss over here is the music, there is a lot more good music in England. I also miss the whole atmosphere; I think I liked studying in Manchester as well because of the atmosphere, although it is hard to describe that atmosphere.

Being back is also great. When you live in a city for a short period, you don’t know that many different kind of people. It’s just international students and some English ones. And when you just start to know more nice people, you have to leave already. I like having a diverse group of people around me again, and bumping into people i know on the street, that doesn’t happen when you don’t know that many people, never realised how nice that is. And I like riding my bicycle again, not having to depend on the bus. Sometimes I still expect cars on the left side of the road, and I had to get use to the right escalator going up. Another nice thing is to speak in my own language again, it is still easier to express yourself in your mother tongue. I think my English wasn’t that bad, but even so there was always a kind of fog between me and the person I was talking to. Maybe I should just come back to improve my English more, wouldn’t mind that, l love Amsterdam, but Manchester has become a good runner-up.

Good luck to you all, xx Eva

(if you ever need a guide in Amsterdam,

you can always mail me:

vrouwe_eva@hotmail.com)

Drinking Geographies: Space, Place and Society

noreply@blogger.com (Bucksoir) — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 12:32:00 +0000

Alcohol amplifies or focuses our experience of particular spaces (Jayne et al., 2006)

We hope you all enjoyed our presentation/learning activity. For those of you who missed us the other week we set out to:

Explore the pub as a 3rd space
Examine some of the social issues surrounding alcohol consumption.

Whilst other academic disciplines have realised the importance of the linkages between place, society and alcohol consumption, we felt that geographers have barely scratched the surface. This formed the rationale for our topic and we chose to examine the public house and 'drinking space' in an alternative way; whilst looking at some other avenues of thought that we came across during our research, namely:

The power of branding.
The social relations of drinking and emotional geographies.
Drinking as an exclusionary activity... Public house: Public space?
How alcohol not only affects our own comportment, but can change our perceptions of place.

We then transformed the lecture theatre into a public house, asking you to reflect on your own experiences with alcohol and how it may have changed your own perceptions of space in the past. The primary purpose of the exercise was to create a relaxed, informal setting, not necessarily to highlight the contrasts to a formal environment (i.e. the original lecture theatre), but simply to show how our comportment is adjusted within these ‘third spaces’. Ideally we would have brought enough drink for everyone but didn't think a lecture theatre full of students drinking at 9am would go down very well.

We've had lots of feedback, and many of you have shown interest in the 'Diverger' learning method we used in our activity, so hopefully we'll see some more people using this method in their other studies (see Healy et al., 2005).

We've included some other useful references for those who have a 'thirst for knowledge' for the topic area, if anyone wants a copy of the notes/slides you can find us in the Friendship Inn most nights of the week.

Craig, Rob, Tom and Grant xxx

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mP8-zYsUK0

References:

Chatterton, P. and Hollands, R. (2003) Urban Nightscapes: Youth Cultures, Pleasure Spaces and Corporate Power. Routledge: London.

Davidson, J. and Bondi, L. (2004) 'Spatialising Affect; Affecting Space: An Introduction', Gender, Place and Culture,11 (3), 373-374

Healey, M., Kneale, P., Bradbeer, J. (2005) ‘Learning Styles Among Geography Undergraduates: An International Comparison’, Area 37 (1), 30–42.

Jayne, M., Holloway, S. and Valentine, G. (2006) ‘Drunk and Disorderly: Alcohol, Urban Life and Public Space’, Progress in Human Geography, 2006; 30: 451-468

Linking religion...

noreply@blogger.com (Sara) — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 08:42:00 +0000

Another off-shoot blog has appeared. Please follow the link and get your minds working...

http://geographyofreligion.blogspot.com/

The good the bad the confused memory...?

noreply@blogger.com (Sara) — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 08:32:00 +0000

The latest group is having difficulty posting, so here is a link to their new spin-off blog. Who would have thought it - a baby blog already!

http://thegoodthebadthememory.blogspot.com/

Last orders please!: colour madness?

noreply@blogger.com (Sara) — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 09:11:00 +0000

So Van Gogh saw the café as a place where "one can ruin oneself, go mad, or commit a crime". I'm beginning to wonder whether Otherworlds might be a similar place. We've travelled through dreamspace, soundscapes and a blue haze to find ourselves at the red pub tucked away in the corner of what used to be a very ordinary and mundane lecture theatre.

I want to congratulate you all on pushing the boundaries of geographical knowledge over the last few weeks and making great (if sometimes somewhat tenuous!) links between your passions and the theories of social science. As Arthur Koestler said: "The glory of science is not in a truth more absolute than the truth of Bach or Tolstoy, but in the act of creation itself."

I hope you are enjoying these creations as much as I am!!

A report on reports

noreply@blogger.com (Sara) — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 12:33:00 +0000

Questions are starting to flood in about the second part of the assessment - 'the report'. I posted details on the shared files for this last semester, but to remind you all again:

Individually you must also produce a 'report' of the learning activity you organised. This should be reflective, showing evidence of how the activity has enhanced you as a geographer, and be supported by relevant reading. I use the term 'report' loosely - it might be an essay, a report, a reflective exploration...

Your individual written piece should be between 2000-3000 words and based on some aspect of the class activity. You may choose to cover the entire session (but don't just regurgitate what we saw on overheads!), or you may focus in on the theories of learning and how successful you felt they were, or you may choose to explore the substantive or theoretical issues you covered in a more traditional style 'essay'.

Whatever and however you do it - you must ground it in the literature, and you should be reflective. What have you learnt from this?

Hope that helps! :)

What's a chicken worth?

noreply@blogger.com (Sara) — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 13:01:00 +0000

Thank you once more for two excellent experiences. I'm sure you will all go to bed hoping to dream of chickens tonight. Certainly Bernard Matthews must've had that dream at some stage in the past because the humble bird brought him potential and wealth beyond most people's wildest dreams... and devalued the chicken for the British dinner table.

As someone pointed out, chickens are perhaps not so culturally valued in today's society, so what might a new dream symbol for potential and wealth be? What should Bernard Matthews hope to be dreaming of tonight? Certainly not the turkey...

So if dreams are a construction of our individual space, we also saw that music can construct the space of nightmares for some. Who would have thought Frank Sinatra could drive down crime levels in shopping malls? This could be developed into a whole new strategy to combat global environmental problems: for example - fix every car to automatically play only the music the driver hates - at full volume- as soon as the ignition key is turned. We would soon get people out of their cars and onto trains.

And then they could daydream their commute away safe in the knowledge that they were doing their bit to reduce their carbon footprint...

Tranquillity

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 17:00:00 +0000

Sit back, think of your tranquil place and remind yourself of our learning experience.

Aims
- to look at people’s perceptions of a tranquil place
- to develop an understanding of tranquillity
- to consider how tranquil environments are related to health issues
- to look at tranquillity within the urban area

Outcomes
- use and apply a range of learning styles to explore perceptions of tranquillity
- consider research into health and therapeutic environments

Here's a brief overview of what was covered during the learning experience.

At the end of the 4th Century and the early 3rd Century BC, the Greek teacher Epicurus converted disciples to his philosophy of happiness through tranquillity. He believed that people couldn’t achieve peace of mind and ultimately tranquillity if they had ‘mental uncertainty’.

Therapeutic landscapes are changing places, situations, locales, settings and milieus that encompass both the physical and psychological environments associated with treatment. These environments allow people to relax and escape the strain of today's high stress society.

Tranquil environments within the urban area are planned and may not neccessarily be considered a therapeutic place due to the high volume of people who use them. In the right situation places such as inner city parks may be used as a place of solitude.

Some reminders of your beautiful artwork...

Further reading can be found on the handout from the lecture and on the therapeutic landscapes reading list.

We hope you all enjoyed your learning experience and took away some of the ideas we introduced. Remember to enjoy your tranquil places and for those who were lucky enough to win a plant ... don't forget to water it!!!

Katie, Ben and James

Tranquil power?

noreply@blogger.com (Sara) — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 11:23:00 +0000

'Power of Influence' Soo K Chang

'Tranquility' Soo K Chang

Welcome back to Otherworlds and congratualtions to everyone for managing to survive past the dissertation deadline!

We had another two excellent activities this morning, and I hope they've made you reflect on the spaces around us. The two issues covered - power and tranquility - also fit together quite nicely. If you think about the images people drew, they might implicitly have suggested people wouldn't want to be 'controlled' in any way in their tranquil space. But equally they didn't explicitly say this. Think about an urban park - we may find tranquility in a busy lunch hour, but our movements and use of that space are constantly under surveillance and are subject to the controlling powers of others. Does it make it any less tranquil? Or perhaps even more tranquil in some ways?

Even nature has the power to control us - we missed out on the experience of lying on the grass looking up at the sky becuase it was deemed too cold and wet.

Is there a necessary relation between power and tranquility..?

And they're off.....!!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Sara) — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 10:38:00 +0000

Thank you to the girls for kick-starting our group activities before the Christmas break. It was a fantastic effort and I'm sure you are all inspired and terrified about living up to it next semester! I have a sister living in Rome who has to buy her fruit and veg each day from the market which only sells produce in season. What would the market traders of Rome make of our spring-water washed salads packed into plastic and flown hundreds of miles before being redistributed by lorry? What a waste...

So yesterday's activity reminded me to make more of an effort to get to the local farm shop instead of relying on the convenience of supermarkets. But perhaps something which will have an even longer lasting impact on me will be the memory of Adam's fish. I wonder if all line-caught Sainsbury's tuna fish are so laid back?

And on that note - I need to reel in a few 'group leaders' for a small additional task: I will be asking each group to blog their activity following the event (see the entry from Laura, Amy, Eva and Alex below...), so need the email addresses of one member from each team to invite you to 'join' to make your entry. Please nominate your leader and let me have their emails...

Have a great Christmas - don't forget to finish those dissertations - and I'll see you all in the New Year! :)

Is there anybody there..?

noreply@blogger.com (Sara) — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 10:21:00 +0000

The rain has stopped and the sun has come out as you all take to the streets of Manchester in search of 'ghosts'. Remember these ghosts do not have to wear white sheets. They can be ghosts in your memories, manifestations of society's imagination or remnants of physical artefacts.

Place, argues Entrikin is best viewed "from points inbetween" - between the rock of objective generalization and the soft place of subjective particularism. It is this "betweeness of place" that I hope you will uncover and engage with.

Share with us your layering of ghosts in place and your discoveries of the occult from points inbetween...

Too Much Too Jung?

noreply@blogger.com (Sara) — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 10:14:00 +0000

Having established that 61% of you are "life's administrators" I'm not entirely sure that you would have taken this morning's lecture in the spirit intended. But for the two of you willing to "give life an extra squeeze" I hope you enjoyed it. As for you "smooth talking persuader" and "life's natural leader", I'm sure you will both find application for the idea of archaic residues at some stage in your exciting journeys through life. And I myself will continue performing that "noble service to helping society" when I find out what it is...

I have been struggling with technical blog difficulties and an ear infection for a couple of weeks, so apologies for the lack of posting. Jeff is also struggling to make contact, but watch this space for a forthcoming posting and a request for feedback on your museum trips.

Today you have drifted through the library's texts on/by Jung and selected three that appealed to your 'type'. Tell us what they were (give the references - do a link for it you can) and what they said that might be useful to boost our geographic imagination. Make it a useful revision source for other readers...

Words on worlds from Michael Mayhew

noreply@blogger.com (Sara) — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 13:54:00 +0000

Books Worm:

This is a revised copy of the text I read out.

I wanted to establish why I wanted to do this exercise.

Books are literally miniature worlds.

The exercise seemed to encapsulate the idea of this course - for me -
that of other worlds - and has been inspired by such books as - The Island of Lost Maps by Miles Harvey.

Authors take us on journeys into other worlds.

Often their world (s) - such as Under Milk Wood - Dylan Thomas - or even a Lonely Planet will take you to another world before your physical arrival to have a holiday- and it is your imagination that enters another world - someone else's - for you to explore, adventure in, live in, discover and experience something of the other.

What do we mean by 'other'?

Whilst you are on line visit - www.visualtheasurus.com - and type in 'other' and experience an array of adjectives.

Authors take us on explorations - even Marco Polo's journey into China is to be heavily disputed, with no reference of his visit occurring in any diaries, journals or reports from that time in China.

Strange when he was best pals with the Emperor of the time.

But he told us a good story, took us into another world through a book, with tales probably gathered from his time in Constantinople where it was here he possibly met some other great storytellers.

Truth V Lies.

Fact V Fiction.

The author's passport into our imagination is often the title.

It is a hook, an identification, a sign post.

I sent you into the library, for me a restricted zone, you have to be in possession of a pass port to enter into this location, its entrance is like an airport, with its scanning, its security, is vastness and upon entering it, upon booking in, you ascend an escalator to take you into departures and on into other worlds.

As a location there is something seemingly sacred, with its pillers of books, its need to be symmetrical, its call for silence, its need for confessions. It is a location of transportation and transformation - it is literally another world full of other worlds.

Librarians are like acolytes, silently ordering the disorder and guiding the lost to acquire knowledge about the unknown.

This is why I sent you into the library to wander and to navigate through the canyons of words, to get lost and to locate yourself with an inspired title, to be inspired by books by imagining what could be inside these horizons of knowledge, these unknown identities and to be inspired by the library as a location, just as Columbus must have imagined there was something over the horizon, just has he filled the gapping void found in the mappae mundi with another world that eventually became titled, The Americas.

Did he imagine this other world before he actually found it?

This exercise is a metaphorical journey, hoping to lead you into another world, into other worlds and beyond - imagined and played with, as there is a thin line between fact and fiction.

Marco Polo told us a good story, he drew other landscape, he took us into other peoples lives, we experience other cultures, other climates and other terrains.

I would hope you could tell your story by picking up a book with a title in a library in a universe, in Manchester.

Explore and Discover.

Part 2:

'I'm Down There Somewhere'

An exercise in locating the self in a universe-city, an exercise in creating a map from the outline of our own bodies.

We drew a border around our body using chalk on the ground outside of The Mansfield Cooper Building.

This could be viewed as an island - a country - a land mass etched out on the ground and seen from the sky.

We photographed this image.

You have been requested to import this image into a computer, i.e. photo shop, along with an image of the University of Manchester campus map, attempt to scan this in.

Overlay the image of your body outline onto the campus map.

It should be possible to erase the pavement leaving the outline by using the magic wand tool - found in the tool bar in photo shop.

Size up the two images.

Explore the marks you have made inside and outside the body, names, smiles, underpants, swords, ships, bombs are a few examples drawn.

Go for a walk using a GPS devise - it has been arranged that you can acquire one of these from John Moore in the department.

Import this GPS drawing onto your original map.

See where you have really travelled.

You have just created another world from the outline of your own body.

Attempt to make a map that other people could use to travel through the campus, attempt to relate the buildings, sites, sounds, to areas of your body, aches, pains, injuries, body memories.

Make this map into an A2 image.

Regards

MM

Take us to another world...: or let's talk 'assessment'

noreply@blogger.com (Sara) — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 09:24:00 +0000

"We learn by example and by direct experience

because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction."
Malcolm Gladwell,

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, 2005

The time has come to talk about assessment - and this assessment is all about you learning, and helping others to learn, by doing. I have posted some guidelines on the Shared Files. These are suitably vague and random to allow you to express yourselves pretty freely. As I said in the lecture, use your imagination, challenge us, stretch the intellectual and physical boundaries of geography, take us outside the classroom if you like - just don't get us arrested.

The world is your oyster, within certain practical limitations in terms of how far we can get from the centre of Manchester in a two hour slot. So I need you to let me know 'where' you are planning on leading your activity. In order to co-ordinate which groups lead which days, I need to choreograph locations appropriately.

So please use the comments facility here to give me your group number and the location you are proposing - by the end of Reading Week (i.e. 3 November).

I'm down there somewhere...

noreply@blogger.com (Sara) — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 12:39:00 +0000

I certainly enjoyed the fresh air during this morning's little adventure - I'm kind of sorry now I didn't have the chance to lie on the concrete myself and walk away with leaves stuck to the back of my head. But then again, it may not have looked very professional to turn up to take my next tutorial in that state. Students do pay fees after all and no doubt expect a certain standard from the staff...

Michael has set you the challenge of mapping your body onto a m ap of campus, and then walking your body, thereby exploring the spaces of campus you may not know. How you document your walk is entirely up to you - you may take photos, sniff the air or navigate the aural landscape. You may visit places of the body you have issues with, like a bad back, wobbly thighs or the fingers you hold cigarettes with.

What do you find there?

Wherever you go, and whatever you find, you must eventually produce a map for us - a piece of art - documenting your body in campus. Watch this space for deadlines. Michael will be posting shortly...

And think about what you left behind this morning. I've watched people walk carefully around those empty spaces representing the placement of your body. They're just lines on the pavement - why walk around them...? Others have added to them. Will you walk these bits too...?

Book of the week

noreply@blogger.com (Sara) — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 10:46:00 +0000

Michael wanted you to take a book from the library. Please post the title and author of your chosen book here. Remember - you may hold your book, touch it, smell it, listen to it, carry it, sleep with it, think what it says about you - but whatever you do DO NOT READ IT! Michael will be here with further instructions very soon...

This exercise may get you thinking about the books you chose to surround yourself with in everyday life. Look at the books around you. Are they mirrors into yourself or do you hope they'll give you answers. Do you pick books that are easy going or those that will challenge you?

The books we collect, display and occassionally read tell a story about us. What's your story?

Week 4: Drifting again

noreply@blogger.com (Sara) — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 08:20:00 +0000

Week 4 sees a change from the advertised in the Handbook. We are no longer walking the circle from Horniman House. Instead you are meeting outside John Rylands Library at 9 o'clock on Tuesday. Look out for Michael Mayhew as he'll be your leader...

In preparation do some netdrifting and expand your understandings of psychogeography by visiting the following:
http://www.sociology.mmu.ac.uk/driftnet.php
http://psychogeography.ca/blog/
http://map.twentythree.us/
http://www.mis-guide.com
http://mis-guide.blogspot.com/

Don't forget to answer 'Question2' and to post your 'Random Entanglement' findings below...