The Exploration Revolution – My #TEDx Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne talk
Posted: 9 April, 2013 Filed under: 125, Community, Geography, Route 125, Sense, Travel, Types of exploration, Urban, Walk | Tags: exploration, fieldwork, Geography, Local, Mission:Explore, National Geographic, Polar, revolution, Route 125, Schools, TED, TEDx, Urban Earth Leave a comment »
I was delighted to be asked to speak at TEDxEHL last month at Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne. I used my 15 minutes to argue that we are currently going through an Exploration Revolution, but that we’re not making the most of it… especially in schools. The talk takes place during the 125th anniversary of National Geographic, a year in which many people have been asking the society “what’s left to explore?“. This short video answers that question and more.
Ecological Urbanism comes to life…
Posted: 8 April, 2013 Filed under: City, Community, External, Human, Population, Sense, Sight, Travel, Urban, Walk | Tags: books, city, eBook, Ecological Urbanism, exploration, explore, Film, Gareth Doherty, Geography, Harvard, Images, Mohsen Mostafavi, photography, Urban Earth Leave a comment »
The latest edition of Ecological Urbanism is terrible doorstop. The first edition is 655 pages, smells good, weighs 2kg and keeps most of my other books in their place. Despite its strengths, it can’t do video… something the latest version on the book can do. The original hardback book by Mohsen Mostafavi and Gareth Doherty features hundreds of photos that I took while walking across Mexico City, Mumbai and London for Urban Earth, a project in urban exploration that I started in 2008. Out today, the new version splits the book into digestible chapters and includes over 15,000 photographs within the 3 Urban Earth films that I made by taking pictures every 8 steps while crossing these massive cities. You’ll find the films in volume 2, Anticipate, and are accompanied by a short piece of text that Kye Askins and I wrote. I’m delighted to see the films come to life in the book. I hope you enjoy it.
The Ecological Urbanism project has a Facebook page that you can follow here.
What are the greatest British adventures to have with kids?
Posted: 16 March, 2013 Filed under: 125, Country, External, Route 125 | Tags: 125, adventure, Britain, explore Leave a comment »I’m currently planning to take Seb (my 9-year-old son) on a series of adventures to explore Britain. I would love to know where you think we should go and what we should do.
Is there a fantastic place that we should discover or an adventurous way of getting away that we should try? Is there a story or a creature that we should find? Where could we have the very best of experiences?
Please do share an idea or two with me. Many thanks.
What is the #FutureOfLocal?
Posted: 22 February, 2013 Filed under: #FutureOfLocal, Commercial, Geography, Human, Local, Tourism, Travel, Types of exploration | Tags: #ActiveLocal, #FutureOfLocal, Globalisation, InterContinental, InterContinental Hotels & Resorts, Juice, TED, TEDActive, Travel 1 Comment »
I’m very pleased to be working with InterContinental Hotels & Resorts to explore how globalisation is changing local places. It’s an innovative project to understand how the unique and complex interdependencies between people, countries and global brands are changing destination, including those that we call home.
This video introduces the project and is an invitation to join the TED conversation or share your opinion on Twitter through the hashtag #FutureOfLocal. I’m excited to be part of this investigation into the relationship between travel, sense of place, local needs and global brands. Please do contribute your thoughts, ideas and opinions as well as spread the word about this valuable and open conversation.
Rapha Explorers
Posted: 19 February, 2013 Filed under: Cycle, External, Fields, Road, Rural, Types of exploration, Urban | Tags: Brendon McConnel, Cycling, Icknield Way, Place, Rapha, Seb, Uffington, Westbury, White Horse Leave a comment »A good friend, Brendon McConnell, shared The Rapha Continental films with me this morning. We’d been chatting about a small adventure I went on this weekend with Seb (my son) to go hill rolling beside the Uffington White Horse. 110 metres long and around 3000 years old, it’s a great place to roll down ancient hills and to top it off, the landscape itself is called ‘rolling downland’. It was actually a confused conversation because Brendon was thinking about the Westbury White Horse in Wiltshire (a baby in comparison at just over 200 years old) that features in this film by Rapha, who make clothing for cyclists.
There is a whole series of poetic and beautifully made videos that manage to record and represent different senses of places. This film of the Icknield Way, including the Westbury White Horse, contrasts country with urban life so strongly that I actually felt a physical reaction when I watched it. These videos are such great examples of the importance of place(s) in our lives, and how exploration can deepen our understanding and enjoyment of them.
TEDxEHL 2013
Posted: 5 February, 2013 Filed under: Geography, Human, Sense, Tourism, UrbanStory | Tags: Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne, everyday, exploration, Explorers, Global, Hotel, Local, Switzerland, TED, TEDx, Tourism Leave a comment »Next month I’m going to be making my way to Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne in Switzerland to give a talk at TEDxEHL 2013. Among others, I’m going to have the pleasure of sharing the stage with Caroline Duetsch Kubik, Mela Kocher and Doug Manuel. I’m excited to be taking part and can’t wait to work out what I’m going to say…
Me on National Geographic Live!
Posted: 14 January, 2013 Filed under: Geography, Sense, Sixth Sense, Smell, Sound, Taste, Touch, Types of exploration, Urban | Tags: exploration, Nat Geo Live, National Geographic Leave a comment »Last year I was lucky enough to be invited into National Geographic in Washington DC to give a Nat Geo Live! presentation. Part of National Geographic’s Geography Awareness Week this is my 50 minute presentation compressed into 20. I hope you like it.
Join me for a conversation with Tracktivist @Hedgesprite on Twitter
Posted: 9 January, 2013 Filed under: Community, Ecosystem, External, Fields, Geography, Sense, Walk | Tags: environment, Food, guerrilla geography, Jess Allen, performance, tracktivist, Walk Leave a comment »Can you imagine living for a month entirely on things that can only be found within a day’s walk of your home? This is what Jess Allen did over the last month and I’ll be asking her why she did this on Twitter tomorrow night.
Jess describes herself as a “stereotypical dreadlocked-vegetarian-eco-feminist-environmentalist-caravan/yurt-dwelling aerial dancer, walking artist and academic hedgesprite with a horse” She’s currently doing a second PhD in performance, developing the practice of tracktivism with a President’s Doctoral Scholarship from the University of Manchester.
I’ll be asking Jess some questions about her work and experiences on Twitter using the hashtag #guerrillageography from 8pm (London time) tomorrow. I hope you can join us.
Join the #Urban100 Open Expedition during 2013
Posted: 9 January, 2013 Filed under: City, Community, External, Human, Urban, Walk | Tags: #Urban100, cities, collaboration, Film, Open Expedition, photography, urban Leave a comment »A couple of days ago I asked a few people on Urban Earth and Twitter if they would be interested in taking part in #Urban100, a project that I’m calling an open expedition because it’s going to last a year and anyone can join in. The idea is simple, to collaboratively explore urban places by taking 100 photographs over a 500 metre walk. Using the same stop-motion approach that I used in the Urban Earth films we’ll be able to create films that zoom through the urban landscapes, creating a unique representation of our urban habitats.
We’ve asked that all photos submitted #Urban100 are under a creative commons license so that anyone can edit their own versons of the films.
So far collaborators have said that they’ll be doing #Urban100 explorations in Bristol, Bangkok, London, Glasgow, Falmouth, Toulouse, Porto and Edinburgh with more being added and suggested all the time.
To join the #Urban100 open expedition you can visit either the Urban Earth website or the Flickr group. I hope to see you there!
How to become a death-defying explorer, like me
Posted: 6 January, 2013 Filed under: External, Human, Sense, Sixth Sense | Tags: explore, first aid Leave a comment »Being an explorer is inherently risky. Asking questions and venturing into the unknown is fraught with dangers, but by overcoming our fears we create seemingly endless opportunities to learn about ourselves and the world around us. Danger is a relative term though. Our perception, knowledge and understanding of “hazards”, our ability to asses and mitigate their risks as well as our motivations for (not) overcoming them vary massively between each and everyone of us. What feels like a comfortable walk in the (world’s largest national) park to one person can feel highly adventurous for another.
This sense of relativity is what convinces me that we are all explorers who go to extremes and accomplish death defying acts (from the likes of this and this). Your extremes may not be to venture to the Earth’s freezing poles, but in our everyday lives we perform experimental and extreme acts that put at risk our jobs, relationships, time and money. My latest gamble was on Sex and the City 2. Despite my best risk assessment I ended up losing part of my life to that film, something I’ll be mourning for days to come.
We are all explorers and as we venture through our life-journeys the best things we can do to increase our chances of survival are to trust aggregated review sites and to learn some basic first aid. I think this video from St Johns Ambulance is extremely powerful.
Getting on a First Aid course is a great idea. If you’ve got a smart phone then I highly recommend this app by the British Red Cross. It’s one of the best ways to become a death-defying explorer, like me.
