Fieldtrips have to be the best thing about Geography.
Fieldtrips have to be the best thing about geography, and it’s not just students who love them. Given that geography is the study of the world around us, the people, culture, landforms and processes, getting out into the field has to be the best way to learn about it. Which is why staff love fieldtrips too. We are still in the first month of term here at SENRGy, but have already been on two fieldtrips with the first year Geographers. That’s pretty good going I think! As a new lecturer here it is a real treat to be able to visit fantastic sites like Snowdonia National Park right on our doorstep. This week we visited the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) in Southern Snowdonia, another brilliant resource which people travel from all over the UK to visit.
CAT is a pioneering centre founded in the 1970’s. This week we were lucky enough to have Director Paul Allen talk to us about their latest project Zero Carbon Britain, which shows how the alternative is now going mainstream as we work to lower emissions to tackle climate change. In the run up to the Paris Climate talks this December http://www.cop21.gouv.fr/en their message holds important weight but also great promise. As we learnt from Paul, we have all the technology we need to go zero carbon, all we need now is the will and societal change to support this. Critically, aiming for ‘Zero has knock-on benefits in terms of human wellbeing and happiness, and our day at CAT helped us understand this in terms of lifestyle and technology changes we can all be involved in.
Our day continued with a visit to the local town of Machynlleth where food activist Katie Hastings showed us some of the community projects that are underway in the Dyfi Valley to support a transition to zero carbon land use. Whilst the Welsh farming sector currently specialises in livestock, there is limited fruit and veg’ provision for local communities. Providing more fruit and veg’ locally is important, both to lower carbon emissions but also for dietary reasons. In Machynlleth there is now a local veg box scheme providing for fifty families; a land share initiative to enable wider access to land for growing; and an ‘Edible Mach’ educational scheme (following the Incredible Edible model http://incredibleediblenetwork.org.uk/ ) where food is grown around the town to encourage greater community engagement with growing. See http://dyfilandshare.org/ for details.
The day rounded off with a visit to the Owain Glyndŵr Centre, to find out about the cultural history of Mach’ and its importance as a town in the development of Welsh National identity. All in all we came away with an understanding that Machynlleth has been on the forefront of social change and progressive developments for longer than we might have first imagined – and it is continuing to make its mark into the future – a great place to learn about key human geography themes from human-environment relations, to cultural diversity and regional development. And now everyone has started to develop their field skills I can’t wait for out next trip out…
Sophie Wynne-Jones is the new Human Geography Lecturer at SENRGy, she specialises in the social dimensions of rural land use change. She has published some of her research findings in CAT’s latest Zero Carbon Britain report: ‘ZCB and Farmers: Reactions to Land Use Change’ (Section 5.3: p156)
http://www.zerocarbonbritain.org/images/pdfs/ZCBrtflo-res.pdf
Publication date: 13 October 2015