2022 GA Presidential Address

#gaconf22
#quotidiangeographies
#everydaygeographies

Remembering those we
have lost from the
geography community.

Personal geographies of
childhood
Geographical
growth -
influences and
opportunities
Everyday
geographies of
the
Anthropocene
Image:
Alan
Parkinson

“Everything is held together
with stories. That is all that
is holding us together,
stories and compassion.”
Barry Lopez
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND

First draft
Image:
Alan
Parkinson

“Telling stories is one of the
ways we can begin the
process of building
community, whether inside
or outside the classroom.
We can share both true
accounts and fictional
stories that help us
understand one another”
(bell hooks, 2003)

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quotidian

“The mundane is just as
crucial and intrinsic to
life as the exceptional.
Finding the beauty in the
small, ordinary things
helps us appreciate the
extraordinary even
more.”
(Sebastian Hill, 2017)
https://medium.com/@magicsebi/an-attempt-at-exhausting-a-place-in-paris-
the-book-its-background-and-its-lessons-for-the-21st-4a7df0ef05bb
Image:
Sally
Parkinson

http://livinggeography.blogpot.com - 6 million+ views & 11 000+ posts- Everyday blogging since 2004

Personal
geographies of
childhood

Geography
Lesson
with
AP
Smith
Copyright:
Ian
Lyons
"Geography is
the study of
things becoming”
H. J. Fleure
GA President,
1948

Childhood is
a branch of
cartography
Michael
Chabon
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2009/07/16/manhood-for-
amateurs-the-wilderness-of-childhood/
Image:
Alan
Parkinson

“Little minds are interested
in the extraordinary.
Great minds are interested
in the commonplace”
Elbert Hubbard
S66
& a mention for Georges Perec

Map created using Digimap for Schools - © Crown copyright and database rights 2022 Ordnance Survey (100025252)

Born here: Listerdale Maternity Hospital

First house I lived in – streets named after trees…

‘Jammy’ Morris
(Joseph Acton Morris)
Latymer School,
Edmonton
Teacher and Deputy
Headmaster
Chair of Secondary
Schools Committee of GA
for 19 years
GA President, 1965
Image: Latymer School

He hoped teachers would have the gift of
“Spell-binding children into learning”

Primary School: Northfield Lane Infant and Junior School

The Map
that came to
Life
Illustrations by Ronald Lampitt – can be read at

https://www.flickr.com/photos/stommy/31387513247/sizes/
B

Black Carr and Listerdale Woods: childhood playground

Richard
Mabey
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain.
The happy highways where I went,
And cannot come again.

Secondary School: Wickersley Comprehensive

Viv Moon
John Neale
Steve Hanstock
Dave Braithwaite
1975
Image:
Alan
Parkinson

Sheila Jones – 1975
Third female President
First female teacher President
GA Branch Officer
Presidential Address
You will all realise that this has been a very personal and consequently rather
superficial consideration of the challenges facing us today. I hope that you may
disagree with some, although not all of my opinions and if so, you may be provoked
into considering your own point of view and possibly in clarifying your own aims
and objectives. If so, then I will have achieved what I hope to achieve in the
classroom, that is, a statement made by Carl Sauer in one of his last conversations
- "I tried to encourage students to keep on thinking”.

Huddersfield, 1982-1985
https://julestoldme.com/2020/05/11/huddersfield-the-naples-of-the-north/
Tim Burt
David Butcher
Lance Tufnell
Stuart Corbridge
Alan Pitkethly

mages:
Alan
Parkinson
/
Sally
Stow

Norway, 1984 – Folgefonna
Image:
Alan
Parkinson
/Conor
Kostick

Vincent
Tidswell
PGCE Tutor
https://gapresidents.blogspot.com/2020/07/w-v-tidswell.html

1986: Patrick Bailey
"Studying geography teaches us
a number of particular lessons
about the world and our place
in it. These lessons derive
directly from our observations
of the earth's surface and
mankind's activities upon
it. The lessons can be
learned from studying no
other subject and they are,
I maintain, the
justifications for including
geography in everybody's
school education.”
Image:
Alan
Parkinson

Bransholme
Estate
DataShine:
http://www.datashine.org.uk

”You’re not very
good at interviews
are you…”
Chas Arnold

1988-2008 “20 years or the same year 20 times?”
King Edward VII, Kingʼs Lynn, Norfolk
Image
by
Flickr
Normal
for
Norfolk
Gordon Stone
Christine Clark
Roger Davis
Mike & Elizabeth Walker
Mike Douglass
Alain Kyd
Adrian Francis
Laura McIntyre
Guy Nunnerley
Lucy Muncaster

Geographical
growth -
influences and
opportunities

2001
Image:
Mark
Jarvis
/
Used
Ink

C
Images:
Alan
Parkinson/Caroline
Kent

2003: SLN Geography Forum
Tony Cassidy – Radical Geography / ShareGeography
David Rayner – GeoResources
Noel Jenkins – Juicy Geography
Val and John Vannet
Ollie Bray
Victoria Ellis
Bob Lang
Rob Chambers
Kenny O’ Donnell
Image:
Alan
Parkinson

‘Real
geography has
real outcomes’
Chris Durbin
Image: Chris Durbin

2004 - Blogging
Image:
Alan
Parkinson

2005: Google Earth & Pro
Image:
Alan
Parkinson

Daniel Raven Ellison
Helen Leigh
Tom Morgan Jones
Also
David Rogers
Tony Cassidy
James See
Abigail Woodman
Image:
Alan
Parkinson
Image:
Tom
Morgan-Jones

"Should be compulsory reading for all university
geography students"
Professor Danny Dorling
National Trust Outdoors Book of the Year
Runner-up Education Writers of Year
Image:
Tom
Morgan-Jones
Image:
Alan
Parkinson

Image:
Tom
Morgan-Jones
Image:
Alan
Parkinson

A person growing up in the 21st
century as a global citizen (and all
that implies) is at a disadvantage
without geographical knowledge –
economically, culturally and
politically.
How can we make any of the
personal decisions that already
confront us every day about
energy, food and water security
without geographical knowledge?
Professor David Lambert
2008-11 – APG team

Images: Geographical Association / Bryan Ledgard

Claire Kyndt
Jane Thomas
Tom Danby
Helen Melville
Alex Birkhamshaw
Edward Pearson
Matt Norbury
Kathryn Sudbury
Anthony Lowery
Emma Jewers
Alexandra Barnes
Seb Aguilar
Image: King’s Ely

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WEuZiEydbcxmBOs0lfs0_2_vzwIX-OLGljw-SS-M4UU/edit?usp=sharing
Image removed for copyright reasons

Thanks to:
David Rogers
Richard Allaway
Matthew Podbury
Ellena Mart
Thanks to Sally, Ella and Sam – family.
Lockdown support network.

Everyday
geographies of
the
Anthropocene

‘The questions we (geographers) ask are profound because of, not in
spite of, the everydayness of geographical concerns’
Tim Cresswell (2013)

Joe Moran
Anthropology / sociology / cultural history / ‘the bleeding obvious’
https://joemoran.net/books/queuing-for-beginners-extract/
January 1937
Tom Harrisson, Humphrey
Jennings and Charles Madge –
write a joint letter to the New
Statesman, inviting volunteers
to co-operate in a new
research project, an
‘anthropology at home’

The students we see everyday… where do they go next?

https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Waugh%
2C+David%22
1987

https://www.booktrust.org.uk/news-and-features/features/2020/october/benjamin-zephaniah-on-
new-book-windrush-child-we-have-to-learn-from-the-past/
Curriculum planning…
Image removed for copyright reasons – Ben Zephaniah
‘Windrush Child’

Lucy Verasamy – a former pupil of mine
ITV Weather Presenter
The weather…

https://archive.org/details/horizonsinhumang0000unse/page/102/mode/2up?view=theater
John Eyles
“The Geography of Everyday Life”
Reading…

Geographers are increasingly aware of the
impact of the diverse ways that societies and
environments can be abstracted and
represented, including during spatial data
creation, and the mappings they support.
Such awareness is also important in an
increasingly connected world, where
many everyday transactions result in a
digital record with some form of location
attached which are subsequently rendered
into maps and/or used to underpin spatial
analysis.
https://www.qaa.ac.uk/quality-code/subject-benchmark-statements

Centre for Cities – tracking recovery each day
https://www.centreforcities.org/data/high-streets-recovery-
tracker/

Our
World
in
Data
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-google-mobility-trends
Shared
under
CC
license

The clothes we wear…
Image removed for
copyright reasons
Cover of
‘Fashionopolis’
Dana Thomas

2019
Royal
Academy
Summer
Exhibition
Caroline
Kent
https://www.instagram.com/cekfineart/
Art…

https://decolonisegeography.com/blog/2022/04/everyday-
geographies-of-austerity-on-the-stories-not-told/
Struggles with austerity…

When I was kindly invited to write this blog, I felt a bit unsure
about what I would or could say. It’s been twelve years now of
austerity cuts dismantling the most intimate parts of life for
some of the most marginalised people in the UK. It only seems
to have become, and be getting, much worse, as I write this in
the midst of a cost of living scandal. I wondered what I could
add, what I could say about everyday geographies of austerity,
when so much has happened.
It was then I remembered just how important it is to consider
not just what happens, but also what doesn’t happen.
The moments lost, the stories not told, the things that don’t
happen, because of austerity.

Everything we touch… Paula Zuccotti

The streets of a city
are:
“a vascular network of
the imagination”
Walter Benjamin “The
Arcades Project”
McCracken,
Scott.
"The
Completion
of
Old
Work:
Walter
Benjamin
and
the
Everyday."
Cultural
Critique,
no.
52
(2002):
145-66.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1354677
Walking…
Image of Walter Benjamin removed for copyright reasons

Created and shared by Ben Hennig

Georges Perec’s
geographies
Free download
from UCL Press
& back to Georges – who can help us explore it…
https://monoskop.org/images/b/b0/Perec_Georges_Species_of_Spaces_and_Other_Pieces.pdf
https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/116894

https://iitcoa3rdyr.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/perec_readings.pdf
Image of book cover of
‘An Attempt at
Exhausting a Place in
Paris’ removed for
copyright reasons

“What can we know of the world? What
quantity of space can our eyes hope to take
in between our birth and our death? How
many square centimeters of Planet Earth will
the soles of our shoes have touched? To
cover the world… will only ever be to know a
few square meters of it…. perceiving that the
earth is a form of writing, a geography of
which we had forgotten that we ourselves
are the authors.”
Georges Perec
Image of Georges Perec removed for copyright reasons

Lauren Elkin –
notes on a Parisian
commute
“The use of the everyday to
understand the
unimaginable is not
arbitrary, it was precisely
the right to an everyday
that the terrorists robbed
their victims of.”
Charlie Hebdo attacks 2015

Networks
Communities
An Association
The
Membership

https://gapresidents.blogspot.com/

1952 – 70 years ago
Prof Frank Debenham
https://gapresidents.blogspot.com/2019/12/1952-professor-frank-debenham-obe.html

Michael Storm
GA President 1988
Image
credit:
Mike
Rigby
“Curriculum
deprivation is self-
fulfilling i.e. a lack of
interesting
geography reduces
pupil interest and
removes the need for
specialist
geographers..”

Presidential Address
The State of the Art (1988)
Remembering his own schooling in 1940s
“His discursive and unplanned lessons frequently took off from an item in
that morning’s ‘Manchester Guardian’; geography was about colonialism
as well as commodities. I suspect that the biographies of many
professional geographers probably contain such characters. What they
shared, of course, was personal enthusiasm. They had sustained
their own enjoyment of, and curiosity about, places. Hence they
were able to infect at least a proportion of the pupils they
encountered…”

“The
irreplaceable
ingredient”

“Professional zest”
“The GA is I feel, a collective expression of that zest….”

Zachris Topelius, 19th Century
Finnish Historian
“no science can stand
still while the materials
of its study are
continuously
developing”
from Bill Mead’s ‘A Commonplace Geography’

NYT – Tim
Urban
Feb 2022
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/25/opinion/covid-
pandemic-depressing-math.html
Tim Urban – February 2022

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/25/opinion/covid-
pandemic-depressing-math.html “The past couple of years has
left us with a joy deficit.
When we picture a post-
Covid world, we imagine
having our old lives back.
But we can actually go a step
further and make up for the
missed experiences, flipping
the deficit into a surplus.
If Covid has given us
anything, it’s a rare chance
for a reset.
Let’s take it.”

Thanks so much for supporting the GA this day, and
everyday… to the speakers, delegates, GA staff and
trustees, students, stewards and all involved in putting
on this hybrid event. See you in Sheffield in 2023.

Images
A – Southwold, Suffolk from the Pier
B – Catbells and the Newlands Valley, Lake District
C – Inaccessible Pinnacle, Red Cuillin, Skye, Scotland
D – Leie and Sint-Michielsbrug, Gent, Belgium
E – ‘Roche Moutonnee’, Nant Ffrancon valley, Snowdonia
F - The Oculus, Manhattan, New York
G – Mer de Glace, Chamonix-Mont Blanc, France

References / Reading
Simon Catling (Ed.) (2017) ‘Reflections on Primary Geography’, Geographical Association
• Contains a chapter written by me: ‘You can take the boy out of Yorkshire’
Richard Mabey (2013) ‘A Good Parcel of English Soil’- Penguin Books Ltd. Childhood and exploration in Metroland.
Mission:Explore (2006) The Geography Collective. Can of Worms. & further books in the Mission:Explore series
GA Presidents blog: http://gapresidents.blogspot.com
LivingGeography blog: http://livinggeography.blogspot.com
GeoLibrary blog: http://geolibrary2013.blogspot.com
Geography in/on Film blog: https://geography24timesasecond.blogspot.com/
Cultural Geography blog: http://cultcha.blogspot.com
New PC Geographies document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WEuZiEydbcxmBOs0lfs0_2_vzwIX-OLGljw-SS-
M4UU/edit?usp=sharing
Nicholas Crane (2018) – ‘You are Here’. Orion Publishing Co.
Sebastian Hill (2017) - https://medium.com/@magicsebi/an-attempt-at-exhausting-a-place-in-paris-the-book-its-
background-and-its-lessons-for-the-21st-4a7df0ef05bb

References / Reading
’a different view’ (2009) – Geographical Association
Georges Perec -’An attempt at exhausting a place in Paris’ (1999)
https://iitcoa3rdyr.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/perec_readings.pdf
Georges Perec – ‘Species of Spaces and other Pieces’ (2008)
Charles Forsdick, Andrew Leak and Richard Phillips (2019). ‘Georges Perec’s Geographies’ (UCL Press) – free
download from the UCL Press page https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/116894
Kevin Boniface – Radio 3 programme -
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000x04n#:~:text=Huddersfield%20postman%20and%20writer%20Kevin
,join%20him%20on%20his%20round.
Tim Urban: New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/25/opinion/covid-pandemic-depressing-
math.html
Storm, Michael. “Geography in Schools: the State of the Art.” Geography, vol. 74, no. 4, 1989, pp. 289–298.
JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40571737.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/0305763800060212

Image credits 1
1,7,99: Microsoft PPT – CC licensed library
2, 49, 51: Tom Morgan-Jones (with thanks to Matt Podbury, Richard Allaway and David Rogers)
8: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quotidian – definition
5:
13: Geography Lesson with AP Smith: Copyright: Ian Lyons
4, 6 ,10 ,11, 12, 14, 15, 30, 32, 34, 36, 37, 42, 44, 45, 47, 49, 51, 52, 59, 64, 65, 66, 68, 69, 84, 92, 101: Alan Parkinson –
shared under CC license
9: Sally Parkinson
16,17,19,24,25,27,29,63: Ordnance Survey
18: Show your Stripes http://showyourstripes.info
20, 30: Shirley Parkinson
23: Latymer Upper School, Edmonton – School archive and Emma Halstead for her assistance
22, 23, 28, 31, 53,54, 55, 57, 57: Geographical Association
25: http://www.fulltable.com/vts/aoi/l/lampitt/map.htm
26: https://www.flickr.com/photos/stommy/31387513247/sizes/l/
33: https://julestoldme.com/2020/05/11/huddersfield-the-naples-of-the-north
All Alan Parkinson images are available on Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/geographypages/albums
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND
https://www.flickr.com/photos/stommy/31387513247/sizes/

Image credits 2
34: Sally Stow
35: Conor Kostick
36: Sheila Jones
38: http://www.datashine.org.uk
39: https://mapmaker.cdrc.ac.uk/#/internet-user-classification
40: John Flamsteed School ./ Eckington School
41: Image by Flickr Normal for Norfolk
43: Mark Jarvis / UsedInk
45: Judith Roberts via Twitter
46: Chris Durbin via Facebook
48, 67: Google and associated imaging partners – images created using
https://www.google.com/earth/download/gep/agree.html?hl=en-GB
50, 51: Daniel Raven Ellison
51: The Workshop
60: James Billings Photography via Facebook
61: Helen Melville
62: King’s Ely
Image
by
Flickr
Normal
for
Norfolk

Image credits 3
70: https://joemoran.net/books/queuing-for-beginners-extract/
70: Mass Observation
71: Chris Beanland via Twitter
72: https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Waugh%2C+David%22
73: https://www.booktrust.org.uk/news-and-features/features/2020/october/benjamin-zephaniah-on-new-book-windrush-child-we-have-to-learn-from-the-past/
76: https://www.qaa.ac.uk/quality-code/subject-benchmark-statements
78: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-google-mobility-trends - shared under CC license and used with thanks
79:: Fashion Revolution
80: Caroline E Kent
83: Paula Zuccotti
85: McCracken, Scott. "The Completion of Old Work: Walter Benjamin and the Everyday." Cultural Critique, no. 52 (2002): 145-66.
86: Ben Hennig – shared under CC license
87: https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/116894
and https://monoskop.org/images/b/b0/Perec_Georges_Species_of_Spaces_and_Other_Pieces.pdf
88: https://iitcoa3rdyr.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/perec_readings.pdf
91: http://www.chirpty.com
94: Mike Rigby
98: Wikimedia Commons
102: Claire Kyndt
Image
by
Flickr
Normal
for
Norfolk

2022 GA Presidential Address

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