Festival of Geography - June 2025

Do you like festivals? Course you do...

Like geography? Of course - love it!

How about a Festival of Geography! Yes please!

The Festival of Geography brings together colleagues from the Royal Geographical Society and Geographical Association (GA) for a joint celebration of geographical knowledge and understanding.

This special event is an opportunity for teachers at all stages to come together and share their passion for geography. Over a full day, attend sessions on creative and practical ideas for the classroom and get subject updates from experts in the field.

The day is bookended with sessions from the GA and RGS-IBG on the future of geography teaching and its value as a subject for students of all ages.

The festival consists of a full day of talks and workshops held live at the RGS-IBG in London on 16 June 2025.

Programme

• 10.00 - Welcome
• 10.15 - Geography: the Big Picture (Steve Brace, GA Chief Executive)
• 10.45 - Keynote lecture: Mark Maslin (University College London)
• 11.30 - Tea and coffee
• 11.45 - Creative curriculum ideas (Fiona Sheriff)
• 12.45 - Lunch
• 13.30 - Practical fieldwork ideas (Chloë Searl)
• 14.30 - Tea and coffee
• 14.45 - Subject knowledge sessions (Anjana Khatwa and guest)
• 15.45 - Choose Geography: embedding careers education into your teaching (Alan Parkinson, VP Education Royal Geographical Society)
• 16.15 - Close

Full details and a booking link can be found on this link.

I hope to see many of you down at the 'Home of Geography' for this special event...

Holocaust Memorial Day

Hopefully a candle is lit tonight....

King's Ely Senior school had a service today to mark the day in Ely Cathedral.

Here's a piece that was part of the service, along with a Rachmaninov piece for Cello, and the lighting of many candles...

Find out more here.

Mitigating against extreme weather

Shared by the Met Office.

Each group will be tasked with imagining they work for a local weather office and have to make a poster to help people understand what to do to prepare for a specific extreme weather event and reduce its impacts.

Available in English and Welsh (PDF downloads)

Human Impact on the Planet

Not a new post - a few years old - but relevant today when teaching about the geography of our consumption and the impact it has on the planet.

Visual Capitalist has produced a striking visualisation of which parts of the planet have been most affected by human activity.

A high definition version is available from the link below the image:

Source: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/human-impact-world-map/

Fen skaters are back

It's rare that the conditions are right for the traditional sport of the Fens, which would have taken place around Ely and King's for years...

It's possible to do it again this week... Lovely to see!

Upware now today pic.twitter.com/RBbergKKC4

— Fen Skaters (@FenSkaters) January 11, 2025

AI - a 15 minute city tool

Thanks to Rafael De Miguel González, President of EuroGeo for the tipoff to a newish AI tool to explore how 'ready' a particular area is for becoming a 15 minute city. 

He recently met the architect of the idea: Carlos Moreño.

15 min city AI is a nice free AI tool.

It explores a range of amenities including transportation connections, healthcare and entertainment, and how accessible these are from each part of the area within 15 minutes travel time. 

It would perhaps be a good basis for starting to look at '15 minute cities' and students could then carry out local fieldwork to 'ground truth' the accuracy of the tool.

Ely scores 75%, which is quite a good score. 

You can see its rating below and the reasons why it scored as it did.

How well does your local place score? 

New Year - new Substack newsletter

2025 is a time to take stock.

We are a quarter of the way through the century, and the last few years have been a bit of a roller coaster ride for the planet, and not in a good way.

Whatever you are up to, don't forget to sign up to my new Substack, which is now available for you to read.

For years, this blog had an option to subscribe using Feedburner. This sent an email digest of posts to anyone who subscribed. Blogger removed that option, and there hasn't been anything to replace it, so I'm hoping that my new Substack will fill that gap.

I've started my new Substack account, and you can visit it now.

Wednesday will be the day that I publish each new weekly update. This will include a number of features:

• blog digest
• update on projects
• some nice images

And other elements as the year progresses...