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Walking Workshop: Walking as Method and Practice

The attached might be of interest to OHN members …

WALKING WORKSHOP: Walking as Method and Practice

Thursday the 11th June, 2009
Cardiff University

A one day workshop is taking place in Cardiff University on Thursday the 11th June. The aim of this workshop is to provide a forum for the sharing of ideas and approaches across disciplinary boundaries, regarding walking as research method and practice. Building on previous ‘walking’ events this event will encourage an interdisciplinary exchange of knowledge, debate and discussion on methodological developments around mobility, in relation to place making practices and to understandings of everyday experiences through embodied, multi-sensory research experiences.

Ideas and practice in the arts are increasingly and usefully being drawn upon to develop understandings of place, space and practice, and we can see the beginnings of much cross fertilization of ideas. This event will capitalize on this interest, creating a forum for the exchange of knowledges by including inputs from those in the social sciences with expertise in walking as research method, and from those in the arts with expertise in walking as art practice.

The day is structured to facilitate knowledge transfer and discussion, with five speakers sharing their knowledge and ideas on walking as a method and as art practice. The discussions that follow each session will be led by another expert in the field. The speakers are Jennie Middleton, John Wylie, Simon Pope and Tom Hall and Rob Smith, with Jon Anderson and Mike Fedeski as discussants. As part of the workshop, there will also be a soundwalk around Cardiff at lunchtime, organized by the artist Jennie Savage, allowing participants to experience some of the theory in practice. There will be a question and answer session after the soundwalk.

There is a small fee of £25 to cover the costs of this event which includes lunch, refreshments and the soundwalk.

We are also interested in providing a showcase for other walking related research and practice, as a way of promoting discussion and awareness of different projects. We hope to facilitate this by having posters on display, and would encourage those attending to bring along a poster of their work.

Spaces are limited to 30. If you would like to attend, please email Kate Moles at molesk@cf.ac.uk as soon as possible to secure your place.

Please circulate this information to anyone who you think might be interested in the event.

posted by: Peter Varley | No Comments »

OHN gets off to a good start at Zoo kick-off meeting

So after all these months of planning, the Outdoors and Health Network members finally met for the first time on Tuesday. The day started with an introduction from the Principle Investigator, Professor Stephen Tinsley over coffee and pastries. Then the fun started…

Participants had already begun to question the significance of the badges on the table with numbers and letters on. Several of them asked me if picking a certain letter would have bad consequences for them later in the day. Sarah-Anne put them all out of their misery by explaining the reason for the badges and what would be happening next. Each person had two minutes with each of the other participants in which to introduce themselves and discuss their research area and their interest in the OHN project. I was manning the stop-watch. Every two minutes the bell would ring signalling to participants that time was up and it was time to move on. This is where the difficulties started with some people having more to say than could fit into a two minute slot. After a bit of gentle cajoling everybody did get round the room successfully (and on schedule I am proud to say!). Each person was given a booklet with pictures and contact details of the other members. They also had room to write a few notes about each person after each speed dating round as a bit of an aide memoire.

The feedback from this session was positive. With 20 people in the room all from different backgrounds it really gave the network members an insight of who they would be working with over the next year and introduced people with similar interests.

The rest of the day focused on getting organised for the rest of the activities and discussion of the upcoming VC Roundtable sessions and the pilot project work. Lunchtime also providede an opportunity for a quick whizz round the Zoo. All in all a good day.

posted by: Aileen Marshall | No Comments »

University of Surrey inter-disciplinary workshop

June 25, 2009
9:00 am	to	4:00 pm

Prof. David Uzzell and Dr Birgitta Gatersleben are hosting a one day workshop at the University of Surrey. The focus of this workshop will be on developing ideas for interdisciplinary research projects in the area of ’outdoors and health’ which can be taken forward to the next stages of the project.

We aim to collate a list of potential research questions from the VC roundtables and additional communication with network members via email. This list will be presented to the workshop participants at the start of the workshop under a number of subthemes. These themes (and research questions) will be discussed further during the workshop and will form the basis of the development of interdisciplinary research proposals.

Agenda

Prior to workshop:

- collate research questions from VC roundtables (3 June)

- email list of research questions to OHN members for additional suggestions and feedback (4 June)

- collate feedback from OHN members and cluster into themes (17 June)

Workshop, 25 June

Participants arrive 24 June, we will book a restaurant for dinner

25 June: Workshop

09.00 - 09.30 →Arrival, coffee and tea

09.30 - 10.00 →Welcome and introduction (David Uzzell and Birgitta Gatersleben)

10.00 - 10.30 →Presentations of results of VC and email discussion on research questions, themes and disciplines

10.30 - 11.00 →Feedback on presentation, alterations to themes and questions. Split up in mixed disciplinary subgroups

11.00 - 11.30 →Coffee and tea break

11.30 - 12.30 →Subgroup discussions to develop ideas for research projects addressing the research questions

12.30 - 13.30 →Lunch

13.30 - 14.30 →Presentations back to the whole group from subgroups on research projects ideas

14.30 - 14.45 →Coffee and tea

14.45 - 15.45 →Group discussion of research projects with an aim to integrate/select a limited number of projects to take further

15.45 - 16.00 →Close

posted by: admin | No Comments »

A day at the Zoo…

The Outdoors and Health Network officially started on April 1st. The first couple of weeks have been spent setting up this web space and organising the kick-off meeting. The kick-off meeting is being held at Edinburgh Zoo next week. Network members are travelling from the length and breadth of the country to meet each other face-to-face for the first time. It will be nice to be able to put names to faces after so many months of planning this project.

The whole point of the project is to bring together researchers from different backgrounds who wouldn’t ‘traditionally’ be working together. It is more usual for researchers to stick to working with reaserchers from a similar background to themselves. We want to mix it up a bit and get geographers working with doctors, psychologists working with landscape architects and health care and biological sceintists working with environmental scientists. This is easier said than done as all these disciplines of research have different philosophies, methods and languages. So over the next year we are going to try as many ways as we can think of to bring together 19 researchers and a number of public agency advisers to help them work together effectively.

At the kick-off meeting as an ice-breaker we are going to start the day off with ‘Speed researcher dating’. This doesn’t mean we are creating a lonely hearts club for researchers; the session gives each network member 2 minutes to speak to each of the other partners to find out a bit about each other and where their research interests lie. Members will be given an OHN members’ directory to make notes in and to exchange contact details with each other. The objective is to break down the barriers right at the beginning so that people get to know each other which will make collaboration and knowledge exchange much easier at a later stage .

The rest of the meeting will be spent discussing the activities of the year ahead and getting organised for upcoming video conferences, researcher buddying, workshops and pilot projects. I have to say I’m really looking forward to meeting everyone and getting things off the ground.

I’ll report back how we get on at the Zoo next week.

posted by: Aileen Marshall | No Comments »

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