Biographies of all the Presidents of the Geographical Association since the founding of the Association in 1893. Researched by Alan Parkinson (GA President 2021-22), with contributions from others, including the former Presidents themselves where possible.
A name to conjure with and someone who worked at the Institute of Education and later in Tanzania and also presented at the GA Conference in the past.
An obituary written by Norman Graves was published in Geography
He was trained by James Fairgrieve and also served on GA committees including the Standing Committee for Visual Aids in the teaching of Geography. He worked with Brian Roberson and I Molly Long, who were of course heavily featured on the blog back in the day, with Molly being a former President of the Association.
I was pleased to hear yesterday that I have been awarded one of the Fawcett Fellowships for 2022-23
Fawcett Fellowships are awarded each year by the UCL Institute of Education.
Edith Fawcett endowed annual Fellowships in the Department of Geography at UCL in 1987 in memory of her father, Professor C B Fawcett, who was head of the department between 1928 and 1949.
Charles Bungay Fawcett had a link with the early years of the Geographical Association in that he joined the staff under A. J Herbertson at the then-new School of Geography at Oxford University. He was later a lecturer at University College, Southampton, and Leeds University. In 1928, he was appointed Professor of Geography at University College London, where he remained until his retirement in 1949.
The Fellowships were originally designed to enable UK-based teachers and other professional geographers in mid-career to spend a sabbatical term studying at UCL. The teaching Fellows continued to be paid their full salary and the scheme funded replacement geography teaching.
In 2018, a second option was added, which provided a format based around twilight workshops and a focus for research rather than the sabbatical term. Fellows are given access to research libraries and the experienced staff of UCL IOE.
I wrote a statement outlining my proposed focus of Everyday Geographies and their place within the curriculum, to allow me to pursue the thinking I had already completed in preparation for my GA Presidential year, the lecture and related sessions through that year.
This classic book by C B Fawcett is still in print. He also wrote a Political Geography of the British Empire first published in 1933.
I shall be sharing my progress and thinking here, so that others can see what is involved and perhaps considers putting themselves forward for a Fellowship next year.
While researching a number of updates for other Presidents I came across the papers of Charles and Frank Fenner and their travels to the UK.
Describing a visit to the BAAS Section E committee in the 1930s...
2 to 3 September 1937, Nottingham, BAAS Meeting
Professor Fawcett (London) gave his Presidential address on World Movements of Population. He stressed the fact, and supported it with unanswerable figures, that the Southern Hemisphere could never be of any great importance in world history. Have often stressed to my students the same thing, based on the same facts, but presented differently. He brought out many other remarkable facts about world tendencies in population. It was a very fine effort, indeed, one of the best I’ve heard at any time.
I am just back from the Geography dinner. A most excellent and pleasant meeting. I was seated by the President as an honoured guest, with Mrs Haile, wife of the Trent waterworks engineer, who has made all those wonderful flood models, on my right. And Mrs Roach, sister of Brigadier General Winterbottom, who has had charge of surveys all over the world, on my left. Both were very pleasant and we talked freely so that the hours went by without noticing. Next on the left was Dr Bews, of Natal, South Africa, who has written a geographical book that I must get hold of.
Next on the right was, of course, Professor Fawcett.
Fawcett, London, is a very fine man, and I have told you of his excellent Presidential address. Opposite was Dudley Stamp, who has written geographies of all the world, and all its countries. We talked of possible Land Utilization mapping in Australia. He it was, I suspect, who gave the President material for the remark in his speech of the quiet-spoken man from Australia whose books they knew and who had lately travelled 35,000 miles at the rate of 150 miles per day. A bit of a stretch of my figures. Just before I left a young man of the London University came up and said he must meet me, as he gave two lectures every year from my books! And, in general, everyone was very friendly and nice. Saw Stevens and Maclaren to say goodbye. General Winterbottom is the most charming fellow, fine after-dinner speaker.
She has been looking at slides with accompanying sketch drawings which also exist within the Oxford HEIR archive (e.g. record 49990 here http://heir.arch.ox.ac.uk/pages/search.php) and trying to source their provenance, which she believes may be with us.
“From my research I am increasingly of the opinion that the typed caption slides were the result of the work of the Lantern Slide Committee of the GA."
G.W. Palmer of Bristol was instrumental in setting this up and first proposed this in 1906
Source:
GEOGRAPHICAL LANTERN SLIDES / G. W. PALMER : The Geographical Teacher , Spring, 1906, Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 177-178.
This was taken up by B.B. Dickinson, who compiled a set about the Rhine Valley & arranged an Exhibition of these slides at the annual meeting of the G.A. that year LANTERN SLIDES OF THE RHINE BASIN / B. B. DICKINSON : Geographical Teacher , Autumn, 1907, Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 133-141.
His introductory remarks to that exhibition refer to the work of the Lantern Slide Committee, esp p. 161 THE USE OF LANTERN SLIDES IN TEACHING / B. B. DICKINSON : Geographical Teacher , Spring, 1908, Vol. 4, No. 4, pp. 161-163
This will then tie in with the 1910 article which mentions the construction of the catalogue I am trying to trace and the fact that the Diagram Co. was responsible for the sale & hire of the slides. I understand that this arrangement lasted until 1939.
NEW VIEW SLIDES PREPARED FOR THE GEOGRAPHICAL ASSOCIATION / Anon : Geographical Teacher, Vol. 5, No. 6, pp. 294-295.
Some very useful information here to follow up on. Any thoughts welcome.
Our Geographers Gaze project is launching soon hopefully, in time for the new academic year.
I started in on a rereading of J B Priestley's classic 'English Journey' (published in 1934) yesterday, and on the very first page, there is a mention of a book by two former GA Presidents: L Dudley Stamp and Stanley Beaver.
June is the final major month of the school year - for me at least - there are others who have to go on for quite a long way into July, or who have perhaps largely finished by then depending on which country they teach in, and the relative importance of the exam season to their timetable.
The first part of the month was during my half term, which included the Jubilee weekend, but it was certainly back with a bang to the final half term of the year.
National Fieldwork Week ran from 6th-10th of June. We hope it may be back next year.
The latest GeogPod was released on the 4th of June, and features Paula Richardson and I talking about the GA's National Research Report and how that fed into the development of the National Fieldwork Week.
Thanks to John Lyon for hosting - see if you can spot the question I wasn't expecting... :)
Day by Day
6th of June
The RGS-IBG AGM, followed by the Awards Ceremony was on my original agenda, but the tube strike led me to have to cancel these plans unfortunately.
And then the weather on Monday morning was torrential rain followed by a lull when I managed to get outside with one group.
Colleagues in other years also got involved.
7th of June
The sun shone and I went outside with all of my groups.
8th of June
The weather changed back to rain, which started to clear by mid morning. This time I was able to get out with a group and explore changes in Ely.
9th of June
Three groups went out today.
I went on a Cambridge GA Branch Walk through the CB1 redevelopment in the evening.
This was organised by the Cambridge GA Branch and led by former GA President Chris Kington - it was very entertaining and informative. Also attended by another former GA President: Keith Grimwade.
Former GA President Chris Kington led a superb @CambGA tour last week giving geography teachers the inside scoop on redevelopment in the CB1 area. Want to be more involved with your local GA? Get in touch. We'd love to hear from you 😊 #geography#geographyteacherpic.twitter.com/hOJvOgdNRE
— Cambridge Geographical Association (@CambGA) June 13, 2022
10th of June
Southwold
Chris Webster has run the Southwold-based Geography Fieldwork Academyfor a number of years, although he returned to the classroom during the lockdown and mothballed the operation. It is now back up and running and offering NEA and other sessions for students.
They have also created the GeogIt app.
I visited them for the day.
This included a quick tour of Southwold with Chris where I ended up seeing a few new developments in the town and talking to the Mayor as well as seeing the classroom spaces which Chris makes use of when he has groups of varying sizes.
At the end of the day, we had a picture taken with the group he was helping that day. It turned out to be the college where my own children went! (although they didn't do Geography...)
In between this I also found time to have a lovely lunch and a pint of Adnams (of course) in the Sole Bay Inn.
There were many other Presidential bits and pieces that happened in the middle part of the month. I'm missing out all the usual tweets
On the 17th of June it was the start of the planning for Conference 2023 with the first Conference Planning Board meeting for 2023. This lasted for two hours, and as President I chaired this particular meeting. The next meeting will be chaired by Alastair Owens as he will have started his Presidential term by then. Next year's conference will take place in Sheffield between the 13th and 15th of April. The theme is 'Collaborative Geographies'.
GA Governing Body meeting was next up.
This took place at Queen Mary University, London
I travelled down to London on the train on the hottest day of the year so far and ended up (after a detour to Hammersmith) at my hotel in Brick Lane. The evening before was a meeting followed by a curry and drinks at Aladin restuarant on Brick Lane itself.
Can I recommend the Premier Inn Hub hotels if you are staying in the area for an evening.
This was followed by a Governing Body meeting with a very full agenda on a very hot day. There are three GB meetings a year. It was the final meeting for several trustees, including Susan Pike, whose term as Past President is also coming to an end at the same time as my Presidency will. I have three more GB meetings to attend in that capacity before ending my term. There are also co-opted and named trustees and I could also put myself forward for election. We heard the results of the recent Trustee election, which will be revealed later in the year.
I also spent an afternoon talking to the PGCE colleagues at Homerton College.
This was a useful taster of my Prince's Teaching Institute session, which also includes my colleague Claire Kyndt. Booking details were here.
Events continued to appear in my calendar:
- GI Pedagogy meeting where we discussed the progress made so far and planned for the next phase of the project - this also culminated in planning for an event next month in Madrid which took a great deal of my time
- Additional meeting at Homerton College for mentors as well as students to look at fieldwork - this was sadly disrupted by the train strike, so I had to do it virtually for an hour which was a little more stilted as a consequence than a face to face event but I'm told by a few people there that it was well received and very useful for their future roles
- Consultancy over a new resource on the theme of disasters, with an educator currently based in Australia - this follows an earlier resource based on Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.
- Discussions over a new Primary resource coming in 2024 which I will work on over the summer, along with a new GIS resource
- Edits for an article that is going to appear in the next issue of the British Cartographical Society's magazine Maplines
- Small input to GeogLive!9 on the topic of fieldwork - mostly to thank everyone who had put together some inputs and who had contributed to the Fieldwork Week itself. It's been great to see the support of the EYPPC in particular for this event.
- Reading minutes of the various phase committees and other groups who meet several times a year to discuss how they can support the Association and fellow members - it's important as President to try to keep across all this activity, and there is a lot of it.
I was going to say hello in person, but instead I had to record a hello message to the student presenters.
- Travelled down to London to see Pat Metheny at the Eventim Apollo - the first time I've seen him since a trip to Hull City Hall before lockdown during the city's time as City of Culture - it was a remarkable concert - I also took the opportunity to wander a bit of West London that I hadn't been to before (or at least for a while) It was a superb concert as well.
We also had a whole late flurry of activity:
- discussions on the ongoing work on the GA website
- ideas for further support for members as the year progresses
- planning for further strategy meetings
The final bit of good news for the month arrived on the last day of the month. We had been waiting for the final report from EPOS: the Belgian agency for ERASMUS projects, on our D3 Project.
The objectives of the D3 project were to: 1. Promote the use digital technologies and open data tools in learning and teaching. 2. Increase the capacity of learning and teaching to integrate democratic engagement considerations into educational plans and strategies. 3. Establish suitable styles of learning to access and integrate open data into schools and 4. Improve educational stakeholders’ response to the need for data and information literacy in schools and teacher training.
We had a very positive final report on the project, and I was particularly pleased to have written a series of lesson blueprints which were featured here, and animated by Greg Donert.
Ending with the usual Twitter stats for the month - a lot of National Fieldwork Week tweeting has upped the number again, and also the impressions - I had almost 100 000 impressions of my tweets during that week alone.
Looking at my stats in the last ten months, it's clear that being President of the GA increases your followers. Since I opened up my tweets from their previous private status at the start of my Presidential year, I've added over 2000 new followers.
I'll be closing my tweets again on August the 31st and weeding out any accounts that aren't authentic.
Just two months to go now. Next month looks just as busy as this one to be fair.
