Written by Professor Richard Phillips.
These students are making observational sketches of objects and plants they have found in an abandoned and overgrown street, which planners have marked for redevelopment. They are here as part of a final year course called Urban Exploration, which introduces creative and experimental methods for exploring and understanding cities.
The field class was great for really getting out there and actually doing the innovative methods we have been taught. We approached them all differently and it was lovely to do it together."
Olivia
BA Geography student
Alongside observational sketching, these students have also learned and tried other methods including smell mapping and creative writing. Everyone on the course has the chance to explore places together, but also to work individually to develop a method and explore a place in more depth.
Individual projects, which they are working on this year, include a visual study of the weeds that grow in cities, and a photographic project exploring the sense of loss and absence accompanying the closure of shops and cafes post-COVID. Other students are studying the social geographies of smell and exploring senses of place through soundscape and spoken-word poetry.
While the COVID pandemic has presented new phenomena for students to investigate, it has also prompted us to change the ways the course is taught this year. We have run creative workshops online, done fieldwork in small groups (allowed now that restrictions have been eased slightly), found ways to include students who can’t participate in person (they have joined groups with those who are present), and changed the location of our fieldwork: rather than going to Liverpool, we have stayed local in Sheffield this year.
Taking inspiration from the experimental writer and urbanist Georges Perec,* who advocated attention to ‘endotic’ (the opposite of exotic, faraway) geographies, the students have learned to see otherwise familiar and close-in geographies with fresh eyes (ears, noses, and other senses).
The fieldclass was everything I love about Geography. The chance to be outside, exploring our own beloved city and collaborating authentically in research was incredibly beneficial."
Katie
BA Geography student
* A PDF of Richard Phillips' book Georges Perec’s Geographies can be found here.