Tuesday 2nd week Hilary Term – 24 January
In anticipation of the 2012 Olympic Games, the Royal Geographical Society has launched a project as part of the UK programme Discovering Places (an initiative set up by the Cultural Olympiad campaign, to give people the opportunity to discover, explore and bring alive the UK’s hidden places, extraordinary spaces and their stories). It is about celebrating the global in the local, throughout theUK.
The RGS Walk the World project is inherently geographical: it is about finding links in your town or city to some of the 206 Olympic and Paralympic nations. This could include street names, stories behind historic buildings, famous people who have wined, dined and lectured in there, or contemporary links established through commerce, politics or entertainment. For example, did you know that the White Horse on Broad Street is twinned with Café de la Table Ronde in Grenoble? Walk the World is about understanding how the contemporary environment is shaped by connections with people and places elsewhere – a concept that perhaps comes more easily to geographers. Encouraging geographers to search for local linkages, and to engage new audiences, the RGS asks people to submit their findings and photographs onto a map at www.walktheworld.org.uk/ For places with many links, walks have been created so that others may follow and learn more about their immediate locations.
How well do you know Oxford? As you have all been here a little longer than me, I invite you on Tuesday 2nd week to help me discover my new home here in Oxford. Starting 0910 and finishing 1040 at Keble College, we will take a leisurely walk around the city (where we’ll also find somewhere to warm up with hot drinks). Along the route, we can accumulate a list of connections and photographs that link Oxford to some of the 206 Olympic and Paralympic nations, and then upload them to the growing map of links on the Walk the World website. If you would like to come along, please drop me an email.
