February 2025
February 25th: My contribution to the London National Park City ‘Maker Paper’
I’ve been a London National Park City Ranger since May 2020 and am proud to have been part of the inaugural cohort of Rangers. The London Park City movement is one that I fully support in their quest to make London greener, healthier and wilder for all and I’ve loved what I’ve done with the organisation to promote this work. To date this has been a range of different things but I was thrilled when I was asked to contribute to the second Maker Paper which shares 12 ways to connect people and nature in London. As the photo shows, my article is about how lockdown made me a London cyclist and the joy of cycling in London. To find out more about the paper and get a copy, click here.
Behind the scenes I’m currently working on an exciting project with the organisation and look forward to sharing that soon!
February 17th: Soil, The World at Our Feet at Somerset House
Having seen it on Alan Parkinson’s LivingGeography blog, I booked a half-term ticket to the new soil exhibition at Somerset House and spent an hour and a half engrossed in the world below our feet. The exhibition itself is incredibly varied with a huge array of exhibits that go well beyond the mechanics of soil. We don’t teach much about soil (is this a contributing factor to humanities' broken relationship with it?) but if you do, there is plenty of poetic text in the exhibition to take back to the classroom and use in resources. My favourites extracts are photographed below.
A particular highlight for me was the ‘Of Roses (how to embody the layers of time)- Fragments of a Bibliography’ film which I sat and watched for almost half an hour. This fascinating film centred around roses with a particular focus on the international trade of flowers and the symbolism of roses in English culture and their complicated history. They discussed the cut flower trade and the significance of Kenya and the Netherlands- frequently using this BBC article and this documentary as sources. What I hadn’t considered in depth before was the role and influence of colonialism on the British garden and the culture of gardening and so I’m grateful for this film and exhibition for opening my eyes to this. Whilst the whole film isn’t available online, I’ve found this short clip from it here which will give you an insight to some of the content discussed. If you do visit this exhibition I’d recommend spending half an hour watching this film in its entirety.
Having watched the film I continued to explore the rest of the exhibition.
My key take-away was that whilst we need to urgently reset our relationship with soil, if we can do this, nature will recover with incredible speed.
February 6th: New community infrastructure at the Carpenters Estate
In my current role as Trust Lead, I spend a lot of time doing fieldwork in Stratford. As I explained here, 5 of our 7 schools use it for their GCSE fieldwork and it’s a regular for A-Level fieldwork and NEAs too. This week saw me visit the East Village and Carpenters Estate for the first time in 2025 and I spotted the new playgrounds and gym equipment in the Carpenters Estate- photographed below. The community garden also has a new seating area and ‘What’s On’ board.
This improved community infrastructure is part of the investment into small scale projects that benefit local residents ahead of the larger scale regeneration project that is soon to get underway.
For guidance, advice and ideas on using Stratford for urban fieldwork, please look here.
February 5th: An evening at the theatre to see ‘Kyoto’
On Wednesday evening I went to Soho Place to watch the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) production of ‘Kyoto’ and would recommend it to any geography teacher. As you go to your seat, you’re given a delegate lanyard to make you feel part of the conference. I was given Norway and could see lots of theatre goers discussing which country they’d been given and what they knew about it. The play gives a fascinating insight into what climate negotiations must be like and the difficulty of agreeing the language of international agreements- acting out the hours spent debating an individual adjective. Although, in my opinion, slightly longer than it needed to be, the play is incredibly powerful and gripping. Sadly, the lanyards aren’t referred to or used during the play but I enjoyed wearing mine nonetheless!
The RSC has produced this webpage about the Kyoto protocol- an excellent summary resource which would be useful in the classroom.
