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Walking the city: a strategy for inclusive learning and critical engagement beyond the classroom

Walking the city: a strategy for inclusive learning and critical engagement beyond the classroom. Dr Steve Millington Manchester Metropolitan University North West STEM Project. Photo: Richard Thorp. MMU’s Birley Fields Proposal. MMU’s Birley Fields Proposal. Photo: the author.

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Walking the city: a strategy for inclusive learning and critical engagement beyond the classroom

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  1. Walking the city: a strategy for inclusive learning and critical engagement beyond the classroom Dr Steve Millington Manchester Metropolitan University North West STEM Project Photo: Richard Thorp

  2. MMU’s Birley Fields Proposal

  3. MMU’s Birley Fields Proposal

  4. Photo: the author

  5. Introduction • But it’s just walking isn’t it? • Walking in Manchester • Key activities and findings • Preliminary conclusions Photo: ExHulme website

  6. But it’s just walking isn’t it? • Walking in popular culture • Ingold & Vergunst, 2008; Solnit, 2006; Sinclair, 2002 • Walking embedded into a wide range of practices

  7. But it’s just walking isn’t it? • The figure of the flâneur (Benjamin, 1929) • Participatory research tool • Mobile methodologies • “go-along” (Kusenbach, 2003) • Mobility and society (Cresswell, 2006; Edensor, 2000; Sheller and Urry, 2006) Photo: Maureen Ward

  8. But it’s just walking isn’t it? • A pedogical device for learning beyond the classroom (Porter, 2008) • Fostering deeper understandng • Engaging non-traditonal learners • Accessibile research and teaching device Photo: North West Film Archive

  9. But it’s just walking isn’t it? • Geography field work tradition • From the Cook’s Tour to critical field engagement • Capacity of walking to explore the specificities of place (Pinder, 2008) • “Urban experience from down below” (de Certeau, 1984) • A sense of place Peace, Vote Robinson Photo: the author

  10. But it’s just walking isn’t it? • “Places are coincidences of events, emotions, memories and artefacts remarkable for being simulataneous and connected” (Anderson and Moles, 2008) • Sensory geographies: • Affect and emotional • Materialities of places • Sensorial experience of place • The immanent and unexpected • Walkers “produce themselves in space at the same time they produce space” Simonsen (2008)

  11. Walking in Manchester I'm a rambler, I'm a rambler from Manchester way I get all me pleasure the hard moorland way I may be a wageslave on Monday But I am a free man on Sunday From Manchester Rambler (Ewan McColl) Manchester legend – Benny Rothman

  12. Walking in Manchester • Walking as resistance • Walking and political protest • Ramblers Association and Mass Trespass • Psychogeography • Situationist International • Dérive or the drift • Manchester PsychogeographicUnit • Continuing significance of walking based arts and political groups • Urbis Research Forum • Loiterers Resistance Movement • Manchester Zedders • Manchester Modernist Society Photo: ExHulme website

  13. Key activities and findings • Since December 2009 six tours completed + one more scheduled • 120+ people • Wide range of backgrounds from activists to senior MMU managers and support staff • Mixed race, gender, sexuality, inter-generational Photo: the authort

  14. Princess Parkway (1971)

  15. Key activities and findings • Contentious relationship between Hulme and the universities • Who is educating who? • Shifting insititutional culture of the university • Participation of senior MMU staff has been essential Photo: the author

  16. Key activities and findings “the process/rhythm of walking in landscape animating the brain the self in relation to it – in ways which generate emotive, affective and imaginative opportunities or demands or impulses” (Jones, 2008) Intimacy Interaction Multiple knowledges Beyond the classroom Photo: the author

  17. Key activities and findings • Themes arising • rights of access • nature and open space • planning and community • democracy and decision making • Architecture and urban design • urban regeneration • community and its loss • history – w/c identity and heritage • Housing • creativity and space • Contested aesethics • Urban elites Photo: the author

  18. Conclusions • Public engagement benefits and synergies, but uncomfortable positionality • Educating the educators – changing insitutional attitudes towards university’s publics • Critical value of walking as an learning and engagement device • Repositioning geography as an academic discipline • Need for continual monitoring and evaluation Photo: the author

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