What Can We Creatively Learn Here, That We Can Learn Nowhere Else? (RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2025)

This event is part of the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2025

Panel:

• Convenor, Panel Chair: Smriti Safaya, Stockholm Environment Institute – York, University of York
• Convenor, Panel Chair: Suzie Eden, University of York

Description:

Our students have taught us that the most impressionable learning experiences in Geography are seen, heard and felt. With more than 25 years teaching geography in U.K. and Hong Kong schools across a range of national and international curricula, we, Dr. Smriti Safaya and Suzie Eden will lead conference attendees on a multi-sensory geography-forward outdoor workshop to stimulate thinking about using the creative arts, smartphone and AI technologies, and interdisciplinary place-based approaches for teaching and researching socio-environmental topics.

This 3-phase workshop includes: (i) sharing research findings and implications about impactful experiential learning on youth agency and youth participatory action research; (ii) putting pedagogy into practice, with a series of outdoor activities ranging from soundscaping, doing biodiversity citizen science and nature journaling; (iii) facilitating a reflective discussion where workshop attendees ideate ways to tailor the workshop ideas and methods to suit their educational and research contexts. This workshop provides an overview of several creative fieldwork methods that can be used to inform geographical enquiry across a range of topics in KS2 to KS5, and in the International Baccalaureate Middle Years and Diploma Programmes’ humanities, geography, biology, environmental science and societies, and global politics courses. We provide a bespoke workshop guide for each attendee to write in, and it would be beneficial for attendees to bring their smartphones and pencils/pens to fully enjoy the range of activities. The University of Birmingham campus’ green areas make for ideal spaces for the outdoor portion of the workshop. Along the workshop phases, attendees will gain interdisciplinary insights from behaviour psychology, citizenship education and participatory action research which can be applied to champion equitable youth and teacher voices in geography teaching, research and action.

Come rain or shine, we will be exploring wildly about creative enquiry in Geography. As ‘they’ say, there is no such thing as bad weather, just bad gear!