GA Conference 2026 #2: Day 2: Musical Geographies

Late morning on Day 2 of the conference was the session that Matt Podbury and I had prepared for the conference programme. 

This was connected with his work on GeographyPods.

Prior to that Matt and I sat in the exhibition area and spoke to lots and lots of geographers. 

We had been given a room that was too small. The Sched app was telling us that it would be overflowing and we tried to fit as many people in the room as we could - around 40. 

Here's Matt presenting his part of our session.

The presentation we used is up on Scribd and has been embedded on a post over on the World of Music blog.

It would be great if anyone reading this was able to fill in the Google Form below to help me with some of the posts I've been producing. There are also plenty of other forms on the blog in places. 

Please have a browse through the blog.

GA Conference 2026 #1: Day 1

The 2026 GA Conference was held at Sheffield College - a departure from the usual venue at Sheffield Hallam University. This is a short 10 minute walk from the railway station - going out the back entrance. 

I drove up from Norfolk and immediately started seeing people I knew: former work colleagues, present work colleagues, Steve Brace the GA CEO and exhibitors from various publishers and organisations I've worked with over the years. 

The weather was warming up very quickly!

It was good to see the Collins stand had a prominent display of our Discover Geography books, and also the iGCSE Geography book that I was series editor for which was published last March. There was some publicity and order forms for the books as well, so hopefully they will be heading into classrooms soon. 

The Rayburn Tours gang were there with lots of free posters. 

After some chats it was out for the "long standing members" meal, which I am invited to each year. This time we had a minibus to take us to the restaurant in the Winter Gardens, opposite the Crucible Theatre, which was getting prepared for the World Championship Snooker there, starting next weekend. It was a lovely meal and there were 8 former GA Presidents sat at the table, and some other guests and people. All the Presidents are featured on the GA Presidents blog of course. 

One idea I had is to revisit those I can and ask them for an update perhaps.

I had the chance to catch up with several people I only see at this event.

Back to the conference venue, where I had a chat about the National Festival of Fieldwork in June.

I then went to check-in to my hotel and came back via the Graves Gallery and Winter Gardens and some light shopping.

The GA Awards went well. It was good to see David Gardner received the Honorary Membership.

Time for Geography went away with a whole host of Silver Awards.

A Geography Champion award went to Mark and Jay the hosts of the Map Men YouTube Channel, which has over 1.7 million subscribers and authors of the book 'This Way Up' which I read towards the end of last year, who were sat in front of me.