2022 Presidential Lecture

1. #gaconf22
#quotidiangeographies
#everydaygeographies

2. Image:
Tom
Morgan-Jones

3. Image:
Alan
Parkinson

4. Gill Miller – 2020 Susan Pike - 2021

5. Remembering those we
have lost from the
geography community.

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

7. “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

8. First draft
Image:
Alan
Parkinson

9. “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)

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

11. “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

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

13. A
Image:
Alan
Parkinson

14. Personal
geographies of
childhood

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

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

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

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

19. Born here: Listerdale Maternity Hospital
Map created using Digimap for Schools - © Crown copyright and database rights 2022 Ordnance Survey (100025252)

20. 319ppm

21. First house I lived in – streets named after trees…
Map created using Digimap for Schools - © Crown copyright and database rights 2022 Ordnance Survey (100025252)

22. 1965
Image:
Alan
Parkinson

23. ‘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

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

26. Primary School: Northfield Lane Infant and Junior School
Map created using Digimap for Schools - © Crown copyright and database rights 2022 Ordnance Survey (100025252)

27. The Map
that came to
Life
Illustrations by Ronald Lampitt

28. 1974

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

30. Black Carr and Listerdale Woods: childhood playground
Map created using Digimap for Schools - © Crown copyright and database rights 2022 Ordnance Survey (100025252)

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

32. Coal
and
Steel

33. Secondary School: Wickersley Comprehensive
Map created using Digimap for Schools - © Crown copyright and database rights 2022 Ordnance Survey (100025252)

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

35. 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”.

36. Image:
Alan
Parkinson

37. Image:
Alan
Parkinson

38. 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

39. mages:
Alan
Parkinson
/
Sally
Stow

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

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

42. 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

43. The estate suffers from serious social
deprivation and crime. Car theft
and joyriding are particularly
prevalent on the estate. Most schools
on the estate underperform, and
unemployment on the estate is high.
The estate has its own Police
Station adjacent to the North Point
shopping centre.
Source: Wikipedia

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

45. CDRC Maps – new site

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

47. 1988-2008 “20 years or the same year 20 times?”
King Edward VII, King’s 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

48. Henry Jewson – image: Gordon Roberts – 2nd image: Ian Ward

49. Geographical
growth -
influences and
opportunities

50. 2001
Image:
Mark
Jarvis
/
Used
Ink

51. C
Images:
Alan
Parkinson/Caroline
Kent

52. 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 Chamberts
Kenny O’ Donnell
Image:
Alan
Parkinson

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

54. 2004 - Blogging
Image:
Alan
Parkinson

55. 2005: Google Earth & Pro
Image:
Alan
Parkinson

56. 2006
Image:
Tom
Morgan-Jones

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

58. "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

59. Image:
Tom
Morgan-Jones
Image:
Alan
Parkinson

60. 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

61. Images: Geographical Association / Bryan Ledgard

63. Images: Geographical Association / Bryan Ledgard

64. Images: Geographical Association / Bryan Ledgard

65. 2011

66. D
Image:
Alan
Parkinson

67. 2013

68. National
Fieldwork
Week
E

69. 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

70. 2018

71. F
Image:
Alan
Parkinson

72. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WEuZiEydbcxmBOs0lfs0_2_vzwIX-OLGljw-SS-M4UU/edit?usp=sharing

73. Image:
Alan
Parkinson

74. Thanks to:
David Rogers
Richard Allaway
Matthew Podbury
Ellena Mart

75. Everyday
geographies of
the
Anthropocene

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

77. 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’

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

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

80. 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…

81. Lucy Verasamy
The weather…

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

83. 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

84. Centre for Cities
https://www.centreforcities.org/data/high-streets-recovery-
tracker/

85. Our
World
in
Data
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-google-mobility-trends

86. The clothes we wear…

87. The TV we watch…

88. The food we
eat… and
how it is
produced…
Image: Private Eye Magazine

89. 2019
Royal
Academy
Summer
Exhibition
Caroline
Kent
https://www.instagram.com/cekfineart/
Art…

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

91. 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.

92. Brushing our teeth…

93. Nearly every element of the process that now finds you reading these
words could have been touched or facilitated by palm oil: it could be an
additive in the paper, a stabilizer in the ink, or part of the resin in the
binding of the book; it is almost certainly either inside or essential to the
manufacture of one of the hundreds of the components of the digital
electronic device on which I am typing these words, and on which you
might be reading them.
It’s probable that one of the transport vehicles that conveyed these
artefacts to you burned hydrocarbons that included palm oil-derived
agrofuels.
And it must be taken as given that the body and brain that writes and
that reads has been reproduced, in part, through the metabolism of
palm oil. We have both used palm oil products to clean or care for our
skin.
We have ingested palm oil as a carrier of medicines. T
Though I suspect neither of us are intentionally investors in the palm oil
industry, we are nonetheless economically entangled with it. The money
that we receive for our labour is blood in the same ocean. Though it
https://www.plutobooks.com/blog/palm-oil/

94. Today, you and I find palm oil, palm kernel oil or derivatives of these
substances in an estimated 50% of the world’s supermarket foods,
predominantly in industrially produced, processed foods like packaged baked
goods, edible spreads, ramen noodles, dairy products, and snack foods.
But palm oil also enters us in trace amounts in a mind-boggling diversity of
preservatives, emulsifiers, stabilizers, coagulants and additives.
Palm oil’s unique chemical composition and extreme cheapness makes it a
perfect base or additive to industrially produced foods to afford a long shelf
life and facilitate transit through globe-spanning networks of trade.
Globally, 72-million metric tons of refined palm oil was consumed in 2020,
roughly 20 pounds per human being. Its intensive cultivation has transformed
our planet: over 27 million hectares of the earth’s surface is under palm oil
cultivation, an area greater than the size of New Zealand and approximately
equivalent to all the agricultural land in France.
https://www.plutobooks.com/blog/palm-oil/

95. Everything we touch… Paula Zuccotti

96. G

97. 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…

98. Struggling…

99. 3 million a minute
David Farrier’s ‘Future Fossils’
‘FOOTPRINTS’

100. Created and shared by Ben Hennig

101. 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

102. https://iitcoa3rdyr.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/perec_readings.pdf

103. “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

104. The 100th IGU – Paris 2022

105. 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

106. Networks
Communities
An Association
The
Membership

107. https://gapresidents.blogspot.com/

108. 1952 – 70 years ago
Prof Frank Debenham
https://gapresidents.blogspot.com/2019/12/1952-professor-frank-debenham-obe.html

109. Storm
GA President
1988
“Curriculum
deprivation is
self-fulfilling i.e. a
lack of interesting
geography
reduces pupil
interest and
removes the need
for specialist

110. 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…”

111. “The
irreplaceable
ingredient”

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

113. 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’

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

115. 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.”

117. 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.

118. 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

119. References / Reading
Simon Catling (Ed.) (2017) ‘Reflections on Primary Geography’
Chapter by me: ‘You can take the boy out of Yorkshire’
Richard Mabey (2013) ‘A Good Parcel of English Soil’- Penguin Books Ltd.
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 – ‘We are Here’
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

120. 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’ (
Charles Forsdick, Andrew Leak and Richard Phillips ‘Georges Perec’s Geographies’ (UCL Press)
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

121. Image credits 1
1,4: Microsoft PPT – CC licensed library
2: Tom Morgan-Jones (with thanks to Matt Podbury, Richard Allaway and David Rogers)
3: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quotidian - definition
5: Geography Lesson with AP Smith: Copyright: Ian Lyons
3, 5, 6, 12, 13, 14, 17, 36, 42, 43, 50, 52, 53: Alan Parkinson – shared under CC license
10: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quotidian - definition
11: Sally Parkinson
18, 19, 21, 26, 30, 33, 38: Ordnance Survey
20: Show your Stripes http://showyourstripes.info
22, 37: Shirley Parkinson
23: Latymer Upper School, Edmonton – School archive
24, 25, : Geographical Association
39:
40: Sally Stow / Alan Parkinson
41: Conor Kostick
All Alan Parkinson images are available on Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/geographypages/albums

122. Image credits 2
All Alan Parkinson images are available on Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/geographypages/albums
49: Dave Shaw
51: Mark Jarvis / UsedInk
54: Chris Durbin