Lantern Slides

I've previously been helped by a number of researchers and posted their questions and feedback on previous blog posts.

Sue Bird is a researcher who got in touch about some images which may involve the GA.

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.

A Geographer's Gaze

A couple of months ago, I went up to Solly Street to have another meeting for our Geographers' Gaze project.

We have identified some images from the archive and have created some lesson materials for their use in a number of contexts. They will be appearing on the GA website in 2022, along with other guidance for using images generally and a little context about the significance of lantern slides in the GA's history (and geography).

Thanks to the other members of the team, and to Brian Ellis for funding the project.

Image: Alan Parkinson, shared under CC license

Geographical Pictures

Molly Long's work was linked to children's conception of geography, and pedagogy, around initial teacher education at the IoE. She was GA President in 1970.

She wrote several papers on the theme of exploring how young children conceptualise places, and how they respond to images. I am part of a group of people including former GA President Peter Fox who are working on a project called the Geographers Gaze.

As part of that work we have been exploring how to make better use of the GA's Lantern Slide collection.

See previous posts on magic lantern slides.

References

Down in the stacks

After over two years, I was able to head to Solly Street earlier in the week to do some of the research that I would otherwise have been doing throughout the creation of this blog.

In the 'basement' (although there are other lower floors) sit the rolling stacks which contain quite a bit of archive material which has so far been catalogued and placed into archival boxes and filing systems and given reference numbers. 

These include lots of papers and documents, including the W G V Balchin papers, which were used to help create the centenary volume published in 1993. 

I was able to find a number of books and other documents which will be added in to some of the existing posts, and also go towards new posts. Some very exciting finds. Here's a catalogue of Norwegian slides, probably taken from images taken by James Fairgrieve.

90th Anniversary - 1983

Thanks to Richard Daugherty for sending through a copy of a TES Article which was published in 1983 that he wrote. It provides a really nice summary of the rationale that lay behind the founding of the community of practice we know today as the GA, but which has gone through a great many changes. I'll share some of that article in a later blog post.

It will be worth revisiting what Richard has to say here when we reach the GA's 130th activity in 2023 perhaps, which will be 40 years on from when Richard wrote this piece, which he found as he was going through old documents to help me with the creation of recent posts on the blog.

Lantern Slides

I was watching the film 'Amundsen' over the weekend, and there were a couple of scenes 'set' in the Royal Geographical Society. 

Roald Amundsen and his brother are explaining the plans for their expedition to the North Pole (before they head South) and use a projector, top right, to show magic lantern slides to some RGS members...

The GA was founded partly to share these slides and help teachers use them to advance their pedagogy.  Good to see them mentioned. 

More on lantern slides to come in the New Year in some other blog posts.

If you have any lantern slides of your own, please feel free to share some images with me.

GA Lantern Slides

The GA has a large collection of lantern slides, taken from the once much larger collection built by previous Presidents and through the work of H J Fleure to curate them. You will remember that the sharing of these, and the teaching materials to make good use of them was one of the original reasons for the founding of the Association.

You can see some of them on a postcard set which is available to purchase from the GA shop.

There is a small set and a large set option.

All images on the notecards are taken from the Geographical Association’s historical collection of Lantern Slides. They provide an insight into geography during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from early geographical exploration and tourism, and highlight a variety of physical and human features across the globe.

Magic Lantern Slides

One of the facts that is often quoted about the formation of the Geographical Association's origins is that is was founded in part because of the desire for teachers to share resources in the form of lantern slides, which were accompanied by lesson materials. The GA worked with a company called the Diagram Company, which started by loaning slides, and moved on to selling them. I have a few lantern slides, which are not of any great age, and there used to be a large selection down in the warehouse at Solly Street for a while. Some of these were donated by Presidents, such as Vaughan Cornish, and others. H J Fleure and his assistant in the library also used to coordinate the loan of these slides from Aberystwyth (see Fleure's entry for more details)
A later blog post will outline some of the work that this company did, and influences on Pedagogy.

There are some connections here with the Royal Geographical Society once again, of course, as they also have a large collection of lantern slides.
Emily Hayes has been researching the different views on the use of magic lantern slides, which mirror some of the debates currently being had around the use of traditional and progressive pedagogies.

I am grateful to Emily for sending me a copy of her paper, which made good reading. The events here predate the blog largely, as they took place in the run up to the formation of the Association in 1893, but the role of the RGS is mentioned.


The role of women within the RGS was significant of course, as previous blog posts have outlined.

Emily's thesis broadens out the use of lantern slides into the 1920s, but from the title and synopsis focusses on the role of the RGS rather than the Geographical Association.
The chapters below explore how these innovations in visual technologies and practices arose, how they circulated knowledge and their effect on geographies of geographical knowledge making. By harnessing the lantern the RGS attracted an expanding and diversifying audience demographic. The thesis demonstrates the interactive nature of RGS lantern-slide lectures and audiences' important role in shaping the Society’s practices and geographical knowledge. The chapters below argue that it was via the use of the lantern that geography was disseminated to new places. The thesis therefore brings additional perspectives and dimensions to understandings of the circulation of geographical knowledge.
Read more at https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10871/23096#PSdvQPc7baSCXDiL.99

I read about the way that slides turned some lectures into a type of 'performance', the forerunner to the Powerpoint driven sessions that many of us will have given, or sat through.




COVIC is the Colonial Office Visual Instruction Committee. It was set up in 1902, and lasted through the First World War. Mackinder was associated with its work.



As Emily goes on to say:

"The Map Room accepted lantern-slide donations from 1888. 543 Donations increased from 1892-93 when the GA was founded.  The Society advertised the fact that it was seeking to acquire lantern-slides in the Year Books throughout the late 1890s. From 1918 Fellows or their executors, family and friends offered the sale of lantern-slide collections to the RGS."

When following up on this, I came across reference to an article by Professor Joan Schwarz, which sounded like it might be useful. I contacted Joan, who works at the Queens University in Ontario, Canada and she kindly sent me a copy of the article, and showed interest in the blog project.
More on this to come in a future blog post.



References
Emily Hayes: 'Geographical light: the magic lantern, the reform of the Royal Geographical Society and the professionalisation of geography c.1885-1894
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305748817300427

Thesis:
https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10871/23096

Fleure, H. J. “SIXTY YEARS OF GEOGRAPHY AND EDUCATION. A RETROSPECT OF THE GEOGRAPHICAL ASSOCIATION.” Geography, vol. 38, no. 4, 1953, pp. 231–264. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40564702.

C. Herbert, Culture and Anomie: Ethnographic Imagination In The Nineteenth Century, University of Chicago Press, 1991, 153-54 and 262-5; Driver, Geography Militant; and Withers, Science, scientific instruments and questions of method in nineteenth-century British geography, 167-179.

Ryan 'On visual Instruction' in
The Nineteenth-century Visual Culture Reader

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=JAuPcgxiT0QC&lpg=PA149&ots=1Klyeu0FxB&dq=canadian%20high%20commission%20COVIC&pg=PA145#v=onepage&q=canadian%20high%20commission%20COVIC&f=false

MACKINDER, H. J. “THE TEACHING OF GEOGRAPHY FROM AN IMPERIAL POINT OF VIEW, AND THE USE WHICH COULD AND SHOULD BE MADE OF VISUAL INSTRUCTION.” The Geographical Teacher, vol. 6, no. 2, 1911, pp. 79–86. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40554112

Image: Lantern Slide from my collection, image CC licensed by Alan Parkinson

Update
You can buy a postcard set of lantern slide images from the GA shop.