Avril

Spotted in an antiquarian book sale... by Hilaire Belloc, former GA President.

GA Presidential election for 2024-5

According to this UCL research paper:

Figures from 2019 show that 85.6% of all teachers and 65.4% of pupils are currently from a White British background; in comparison, 78.5% of the working age population of England were recorded as White British in the 2011 census 

(UK Government, 2020).

To date, 100% of GA Presidents have been 'White British' (with the occasional French-born President, and others born overseas). 

This needs to change.

If you would like to be involved in changing this narrative, we are now looking for the next GA President after Denise Freeman, who will be President in 2023-4. 

Nominations need to be in by the 1st of November.

You will see that there are also some other vacancies which we would welcome applicants.

Geographers' Gaze Project

I worked on this project with Peter Fox, another former President for over a year and a half on and off, with several meetings at Solly Street and some other work remotely.

Isabel Richardson had done a great deal of preparatory work at Solly Street on the lantern slide collection, which used to number in the tens of thousands. Isabel had been cataloguing the collection.

The plan was to make use of a fund generously donated by former Honorary Treasurer Brian Ellis, to bring these images back out into the open, and provide some ideas for their use in the classroom as well as some context.

I worked with Peter Fox and we co-wrote the accompanying text for each image on the GA website.

The website area is now live, and there is also an article that I have written for the latest GA Magazine.

My original version of the text was a little longer than the final version, which we agreed needed to be a bit tighter to increase the instant accessibility of the resource.

For those who may want a little extra detail on the images, you can download the longer version from Slideshare here - it's over 30 pages long:

From the archive...

A name from the past on a document in Solly Street. One of several findings from my recent trip... more to come in future posts here.

From the archive: T C Warrington to HRM in 1938

I visited the archive in Solly Street during the summer holidays and made some great discoveries.

I was able to access some letters from the personal collection of Hugh Robert Mill, received between 1893 and 1944. They were given to the GA in 2000 by Arthur Hunt, who received them from L J Jay's widow. 

L J Jay was a former GA librarian.

This letter was sent by T C Warrington to Hugh Robert Mill in 1938. Warrington was President later but at the time was Chair of the Library Committee, and the famous town planner Sir Patrick Abercrombie was President. He was requesting some information about why the RGS got involved with education... I would quite like to have seen the reply.

Warrington to Mill about the GA.pdf from GeoBlogs

It's also interesting to see the header of the paper that is used, which still has Sir Halford Mackinder as the Chairman of Council, and Fleure as Honorary Secretary and Editor. This was a time just before WWII when the connections with the GA's origins were still strong.

It's also interesting to see the mention of 'Local Branches in Educational Centres throughout the Country with Affiliated Associations in N. Ireland, S. Africa, Burma, U.P, India and Ceylon'.

U.P is presumably United Provinces.

I perhaps need to find out more about these Affiliated Associations. There is some 'decolonising' research and work to do here.