LivingGeography

Intangible Cultural Heritage

2026-10-17T14:45:35.658+01:00

If you haven't checked out the full UNESCO list of these... please do.

I've written about this before on several blogs, and experienced quite a few of them, including this one... but there are so many of them...

More delays...

2026-10-17T14:18:40.709+01:00

Source: https://www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/national-curriculum-consultation-delayed-until-later-year

A browser A-Z

2026-10-17T12:36:42.500+01:00

Your web browser of choice (Chrome for me, Safari on my phone and Edge at work) is recording the websites you visit and also bookmarking them with cookies.

Typing a letter will start to autofill the URL line with a site you visit frequently.

It says something about your browsing and frequent reads.

Here's what my browser returned:

A - Amazon - a little sad, but I do buy stuff from it - not books always, but consumables for printers, and those odd bits that you need in a hurry. I live in a small Norfolk village which is my excuse...

B - Blogger - not surprising - I blog every day and have done for many years and run over 20 blogs

C - Churchill - car and home insurance

D - Digimap for Schools - well worth the subscription fee. Also check whether you are eligible for free access.

E - EMO-GI - encouragingly - a project I'm involved with on behalf of Eurogeo.

F - Flickr - this is a photo-sharing site. I have been a PRO member for many years, and have shared over 50 000 images over the years, particularly of travels

G - GMail - unsurprising again... this tab is always open

H - HSBC - my bank

I - Another ERASMUS project I'm involved with called Infra4nextgen.eu

J - A bit of a random one, but this one which tracks seismic activity in Iceland. It's Danish for 'Earth Watch'.

K - King's Ely Sharepoint page - resources and other links relevant to my job

L - LinkedIn - a networking tool for professionals - plus some daily games

M - Google Maps - used for route planning

N - BBC News - a daily check for stories of geographical significance

O - Outlook - for my work emails.

P - The PTI - I worked with them on the first Symposium at the start of the summer break and have been involved in other events. Check out their geography CPD.

Q - nothing

R - The Royal Geographical Society - currently in my third year as Vice President Education

S - StoryMaps - ESRI's tool for creating interactive maps.

T - TEAMS - unfortunately... I avoid using this when I can but have to use it for work

U - The Gapminder WorldView Upgrader - one I've used for work this term

V - this takes me to the log in page for Pebblepad - this is the online tool used by the Geographical Association to coordinate the portfolios for applications for their Primary and Secondary Geography Quality Marks - I've been fortunate to be part of the moderating team for both for over 20 years now.

W - Worldly Music - my blog project for 2026, which has reached over 600 posts and is beginning to attract some good page views...

X - nothing

Y - YouTube

Z - nothing

The Trent - from source to sea

2026-10-17T10:46:53.912+01:00

A lovely new film from the Wildlife Trusts.

A cross-posting from my GCSE Natural History blog.

The immersive 'A River Speaks' explores the cultural significance of rivers across the UK and the growing pressures they, and the communities who live and work alongside them, face.

Voiced by Line of Duty actor Vicky McClure, this film gives a voice to our wonderful rivers. The film follows the River Trent from source to sea, showcasing the conservationists, farmers, schoolchildren and communities working to restore its health and reconnect people with the river.

Leiper's Model of Tourism

2026-10-15T20:32:25.099+01:00

While working on some writing recently I was exploring the Butler Model and alternatives to exploring the impacts of tourism.

Leiper's Model is one alternative to Butler's model, which I've written about a number of times.

It was developed in 1979, which means it predates some of the modern trends in tourism e.g. dental tourism to Turkey, medical tourism to Kuala Lumpur and of course sex tourism to various locations - althought it could be argued the Grand Tour involved a bit of the latter.

Leiper (1979) defined tourism as:

‘…the system involving the discretionary travel and temporary stay of persons away from their usual place of residence for one or more nights, excepting tours made for the primary purpose of earning remuneration from points en route. The elements of the system are tourists, generating regions, transit routes, destination regions and a tourist industry. These five elements are arranged in spatial and functional connections. Having the characteristics of an open system, the organization of five elements operates within broader environments: physical, cultural, social, economic, political, technological with which it interacts.’

Image source: https://tourismteacher.com/leipers-tourism-system/

China's "Shein village"

2026-10-15T20:30:55.883+01:00

"If there are 31 days in a month, I will work 31 days" - factory employee

A cross posting from my GeographyTeacher 2.0 blog which includes details from my teaching.

China has several towns which are famous for the production of particular items, just as cities in the UK used to be connected with particular industries e.g. textiles in Manchester, hats in Luton etc.

SHEIN is one of the most popular websites for buying low cost (and therefore low quality) items.

There is a town in China which dedicates a great deal of manufacturing to producing items for this website.

It is called Panyu, and is known as the 'Shein village'.

Read more in the BBC News article linked to above.

This is a useful video describing the impact this has:

Thanks to Fiona Sheriff for the lead to this particular video.

Perfect for our unit on Fast Fashion with Year 8.

Coming soon...

2026-10-15T19:53:57.434+01:00

Thanks to Grace Gourlay for this image shared on LinkedIn.

I saw this on a screen a few days ago, and the full launch is coming next week, for the replacement for 'Geography Review' with the same editorial team now published by the Royal Geographical Society.

Chester Zoo's weather app campaign

2026-10-15T19:26:00.846+01:00

Chester Zoo is leading a campaign to change the symbols that are used in weather forecasts when the weather is changeable (which is usually a lot of the time in the UK - not this summer of course...)

They explain that when people see some cloud cover or a rain symbol they decide not to go out to somewhere expensive like a zoo - family tickets cost quite a lot. This is often a decision which is taken on the basis of a symbol on an app... which doesn't actually show that it will definitely rain at the zoo's location exactly when that person is visiting. The rain may not appear... it may last for just a few minutes... it may fall near the zoo but not actually at the zoo itself. Symbols placed on a weather map are indicative, and cover large areas.

EMO-GI #31: Young people's views on climate change - it's complicated...

2026-10-15T12:31:19.409+01:00

Another useful research paper to add to the hundreds that formed part of our original sweep of papers in this area.

Joy Perry, Will Wale, Nicola Walshe & Elizabeth A. C. Rushton (11 Sep 2026): Disaggregating a climate generation: gender, agency and climate education among school students in England, Environmental Education Research

Abstract

Youth are often portrayed as a unified ‘climate generation’, yet this hypothesis risks obscuring crucial differences in how young people understand and engage with climate change.

Drawing on a large-scale survey of secondary school students (11–14 years) in England, this paper examines how gender, including gender-diverse identities, and age correlate with climate-related emotions, attitudes, and perceived agency.

Our findings show that girls report higher climate anxiety and sense of responsibility, but also greater helplessness, while boys express lower concern and greater optimism; gender-diverse students experience the most intense emotions overall.

Older students are more likely to link climate action to systemic change than younger peers, who focus on individual behaviours. These disparities are not rooted in differences in knowledge but in emotional and agency constraints, revealing how structural and cultural conditions shape who is able to achieve agency.

We argue that equitable climate change education requires attention to emotional labour, social identities, and the ecological conditions through which agency is achieved. By disaggregating the ‘climate generation’, this study reframes youth climate engagement as differentiated and relational, advancing debates on gender, justice, and agency in climate change education.

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.

Worldly Wednesdays #74: Busy

2026-10-14T19:55:38.926+01:00

I post these each Wednesday during term-time, sharing what I do with my non-teaching days through the year: sometimes at home and sometimes elsewhere.

The latest issue of the LivingGeography Substack Newsletter was published earlier today.

I've now reached Issue 93. Another good issue packed with interesting items and hopefully useful updates.

I had a few meetings today, starting with a chat with an Awarding body.

GCSE qualifications are being updated over the coming years. We await the KS3 draft Programme of Study, and also to find out whether GCSE will be in Stage 1 of the updates to qualifications.

And when the GCSE Natural History will be available for first teaching and what that draft PoS says.

I marked some books, although I try to do those in school usually. Fieldwork this week and next week had eaten into the time available to do that.

The major part of the day was spent working on a report for the EMO-GI project. It's one of the first outputs from our work on the project, and runs to around 60 pages with insights from over 200 research papers which we have been reading and combining into a report for educators and teacher trainers.

I've been doing this on behalf of Eurogeo. We have a meeting next week to approve the final version and then it should be appearing on our website.

20% off pre-orders of 'The Geography Curriculum as a Progression Model'

2026-10-14T16:21:53.514+01:00

This book is out in January 2027.

I've blogged about it a lot over the last couple of years as it has taken shape with the help of Alex Standish and the cohort of Fawcett Fellows I was privileged to be a part of.

This book invites geography subject leaders to reveal the intricacies of how they construct, implement and evaluate their secondary curricula. Through these reflections, they outline their vision of the geography students they want to nurture, core concepts, how units of study are sequenced for progression, how skills and fieldwork are integrated, opportunities to explore geographical issues and values, and links to academic geography.

Each chapter explains how these teachers decide which places, case studies and issues to study, how they attempt to avoid stereotypes and single story narratives, and how they develop pupils' ability to examine issues from different perspectives. They also discuss what is meant by a knowledge-turn in curriculum, why this was called for, how social realist epistemology can help schools as they re-contextualise knowledge and principles of curriculum design.

This book grows out of the UCL Fawcett Fellowship scheme for geography teachers. In 2022-23, a group of seven experienced geography teachers worked together to research curriculum theory and geography education. While each teacher was in a different situation with respect to curriculum development in their school, they learnt collaboratively and developed ways to improve curriculum structure, depth, coherence and progression in their department.

You can currently get 20% off the cover price by pre-ordering - that may have changed if you are reading this after the date of posting.

Why not secure a copy for your departmental library at a reduced price.

100 years of wandering in the wood

2026-10-14T15:41:53.363+01:00

Lots of coverage of this anniversary today...

Attachment to Place

2026-10-13T20:44:06.286+01:00

The first time I visited King's Lynn was in 1988 when I went for an interview at King Edward VII High School - at the time, the best school in the area. I was unsuccessful, as I had been for the previous twenty-ish interviews at schools all over the north, the midlands and beyond. I was always told that I was terrible at interviews.

The following day, I had an interview in Long Eaton in Nottinghamshire. I was unsuccessful there too.

The day after that I was contacted by King Edward VII School and offered a job as their preferred candidate had pulled out. I verbally accepted the job.

Later that day, I was then contacted by Long Eaton School to offer me a job as their preferred candidate had also pulled out... I told them that I had already accepted a job in Norfolk.

And the rest was.... geography.

I've lived in Norfolk since then. Over half my life. This was what might be called a 'Sliding Doors' moment after the film of the same name.

Our attachments to place occur for a number of different reasons.

King's Lynn's museum is free for much of the year, and charges an entrance fee during the summer months only.

It is now free once again for the winter months.....

Visitors can see the timbers from Seahenge.

A 4000 year old timber circle from the Bronze Age.

Image: Alan Parkinson

This was discovered off the coast at Holme next the Sea.

It caused a huge amount of controversy both locally and nationally, when English Heritage agreed to fund the Norfolk Archaelogical Unit to remove the timbers from the beach rather than leave them in situ.

Brendan's quest to bring back old StoryMaps

2026-10-13T20:10:03.633+01:00

Over the years, templates that were used to create StoryMaps are 'retired' by ESRI which means really useful resoruces are deprecated and made unavailable. I remember one that made a StoryMap from a Flickr photo album which was awesome... no longer available...

Brendan Conway is on a quest to bring some of the more useful back, using data from the original StoryMaps and Claude coding to recreate them as closely as possible.

Here's one such resource: the very useful Typhoon Haiyan resource which many tens of thousands of people had viewed.

Inclusive Fieldwork Guidance

2026-10-13T19:57:06.465+01:00

I was very pleased to have been asked to give one of the keynotes at the recent Enhancing Fieldwork Learning Showcase.

I was delighted with the reaction to my talk, where I shared some thoughts on inclusive fieldwork, mentioning the work of Catherine Owen and others in this area.

On LinkedIn earlier there were details of some useful guidance on inclusive fieldwork.

Robin Hayward and the team at Leeds University shared some excellent inclusive fieldwork guidance over on their website which was started by Professor Martin Zebracki.

EDINA / OS free access to Digimap for Schools scheme

2026-10-13T19:32:17.006+01:00

A reminder that if you teach in a school in one of the more deprived area of the country, you can get free access to Digimap for Schools.

This is not linked to the quality of provision in your school, but in your geographical location. I am told that many of the schools who are eligible for free access to Digimap for Schools - a saving of over £100 from your budget, have not yet signed up. Go here to check your eligibility.

Alan Garner - a critical analysis

2026-10-13T14:30:31.749+01:00

If anyone wants to treat me to a copy of this I'd appreciate it... a review copy perhaps?

New out from Manchester University Press.

I've written about Alan Garner quite a few times over the years, and the impact of his writing... whether Brisingamen and Gomrath, Strandloper, Thursbitch, Owl Service, Voice that Thunders or some other book on my thinking about place, layers of time, landscapes, geology ('The Stone Book Quartet') mythology, folk tales, hauntology and so much more.

He is one of my favourite authors, and his books sit on the shelves on the GeoLibrary.

I'd love to read this but the price is fairly astonishing...

Publisher's description:

Alan Garner has been described by Philip Pullman as 'the most important British writer of fantasy since Tolkien'.

This book is the first collected edition to critically analyse Garner's body of work.

This comprehensive analysis stretches from Garner's early work, from the straightforward magical world of The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (1960) to the more challenging 'adolescent fiction' of The Owl Service (1967) and Red Shift (1973). It then moves to analysis of Garner's subsequent corpus of work that is remarkable for both its thematic continuity and imaginative range, including Strandloper (1996), Thursbitch (2003) and Boneland (2012). His most recent novel, Treacle Walker, was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize and recent criticism centred on folk horror and hauntology has reignited a critical and public acknowledgement of Garner's work.

Temujin Doran & Union Glacier

2026-10-13T13:30:10.789+01:00

This is Temujin Doran.

He's a filmamker who has made a series of films on the VIMEO platform using the name StudioCanoe.

Temujin Doran is a British filmmaker, creative director, and the founder of Studio Canoe, a production company known for visually distinctive documentary, commercial, and branded storytelling. His work spans film, photography, and creative direction, with an emphasis on cinematic imagery, travel, culture, and human-centered narratives.

His films are characterized by an emphasis on visual storytelling, natural landscapes, and authentic human experiences. Rather than relying heavily on narration, many of his projects use strong cinematography, ambient sound, and carefully composed imagery to convey place and emotion. This approach has made his work recognizable within travel, outdoor, and documentary filmmaking.
Studio Canoe

I first came across his work when he stayed at Union Glacier camp in Antarctica. He was travelling with another expedition that got stranded in Union Glacier due to bad weather which meant the flight from Chile couldn't pick him up.

He focussed on the people who worked at the Camp and created a wonderful film, with a touch of Wes Anderson about it.

I've used it every year since I first came across it when it was published.

You can see more of his work on the StudioCanoe page, as there are other shorter versions of the films and others made more recently.

Check it out...

Topical Tuesdays #6: GA Presidents Blog

2026-10-13T11:54:38.790+01:00

I am going to put up a new Substack post each term-time Tuesday on a different topic.

Today is the 6th of those posts, and it is on the topic of my GA Presidents blog and asking for some more help fleshing out some of the entries.

I did a good scout round for information when I first completed the project about four years ago.

Since then we have sadly lost several former Presidents. The blog has proved helpful for those who wanted to find out more about their contributions to the discipline.

I'd be grateful to those who have been involved with the GA for some time if they could browse through old photos to see whether they have any from former GA Conferences in particular.

One more TT post to come and then it will be a short break for half term.

EMO-GI #30: Mentioned in the EuroGeo newsletter

2026-10-11T20:41:22.828+01:00

It was good to see a mention for the project in the latest EuroGeo Newsletter.

This summarises progress on many of the projects that EuroGeo is involved with in some way.

Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) - the latest figures

2026-10-11T20:40:22.616+01:00

The 2026 report from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre is out.

Internal displacement is when people are forced to move within their own country.

Discover Geography - who's got some?

2026-10-11T20:04:31.078+01:00

The Discover Geography series was published near the start of the year. We've just had some sales details as authors connected to royalty payments (these arrive in October and March usually).

They tell us that there are lots of the books out there... mostly in countries outside of the UK, which is important as that was an important element of their design: to support teachers who would then go on to introduce students to iGCSE and the IB.

Have you got some copies?

I'd love to know what you think of them and how you've been using them. Which books have you got?

Have you got no copies of them (yet)?

You know what to do...

'After the Tide'

2026-10-10T18:19:59.019+01:00

Back in 2013, I drove along the Norfolk coast from Blakeney in the west to Happisburgh in the East - running out of time to get to Hemsby on what was a day off from teaching. It was the day after a storm surge which brought back memories of 1953 for some people and damaged Cromer Pier and beach huts further along the coast, entered homes in Blakeney and breached the sea wall.

Now there is a film which explores that time, and the threats facing this stretch of coast.

Research stations in Antarctica

2026-10-10T17:04:17.983+01:00

I was doing a spot of writing today about Antarctica.

There's the UK Polar Network Antarctica Flag competition to enter of course.

I discovered a new useful interactive map. It's been developed by COMNAP.

It shows the 33 countries who operate within Antarctica.

The COMNAP website provides more details of the work in Antarctica.

Animals on banknotes

2026-10-09T18:37:48.019+01:00

A cross-posting from my GCSE Natural History blog.

Following a public vote, which attracted over 2 million votes in total, four animals have been selected to appear on English banknotes. The bumble bee got the most votes.

UK wildlife on England’s banknotes, from the Bank of England.

The Atlantic puffin, barn owl, buff-tailed bumblebee and European hedgehog will represent UK wildlife and feature as the central images on our next series of banknotes.

The decision comes after nearly 500,000 people responded to a public consultation asking which native wildlife they would like to see on our banknotes. They chose from a shortlist of 18 options across three categories – mammals; birds; and amphibians, insects and fish – developed in collaboration with a panel of UK wildlife experts.

The Bank used the feedback from the consultation to decide on the four animals, one for each denomination of banknote. The selected animals meet the Bank’s objectives for a distinctive set of banknotes that can support counterfeit resilience and are representative of the UK.

The barn owl (Tyto alba), buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) and European hedgehog (Erinaceus europaeus) were the most popular animals in their respective categories. The Atlantic puffin (Fratercula arctica) was selected because it was the most popular marine animal. The inclusion of a marine animal will add variety to the series, making the denominations easier to distinguish and will provide an opportunity to celebrate the British coastline.

The decision on which animal will feature on which denomination will be made in due course and announced closer to launch. While the selected animals will feature as the central imagery for the next series, the banknotes will also feature other elements from nature to complete the designs, potentially including other shortlisted animals. The next series will continue to include a portrait of the monarch.

It takes a number of years to design, test and print banknotes, to make sure they are high-quality, resilient and accessible. The expectation is, therefore, that the first denomination from the next series will be launched over the next few years.