It's been a bit crazy manic recently as I've been doing all sorts with 'The Geography Collective' - We are a collective of Geography activists, teachers, academics, artists and guerrillas. We’ve come together to encourage (young) people to see our world in new ways.
This week I'm rolling up my sleeping bag and heading off to the Latitude Festival. We'll be in the Kids area setting missions for the kids. And in order to find us, and find out who else will be there I've just inked up this map for the festival's website. They'll be printing up a whole load to hand out too, so lots of possibilities for making paper airplanes if the acts don't cut the mustard. I've also done a few drawings for this 'Mission:Explore Latitude survival guide' , feel free to download it and get up to all sorts.
The Collective have just released two new 'Mission:Explore' books with over 50 missions in each. 'Mission:Explore - On the Road' and 'Mission:Explore - Camping'. At this years Hay on Wye Festival our first book 'Mission:Explore' was voted as a 'Hay Festival and National Trust Outdoors Book of the Year', along with 5 other books but oddly I forget their names now. Our first book includes 102 activities that encourage children to get outside exploring. Designed to be written, drawn, glued and rubbed in, all royalties from this first book are invested in free copies for children who would never usually be given one.
We've had pretty kind reviews for this book so far: Mission:Explore “The Kids Classic ... Like bringing along a nanny with endless patience and a James Bond fixation.”
- The Sunday Times Travel Magazine
"Mission:Explore is bold, cool, exciting, innovative, geographic, educational…and just plain fun!”
- National Geographic Education
" ... it may just be the most revolutionary geography-related book ever published"
- Geographical Magazine
As well as the books we've got a website which maps a whole load of missions across the UK : http://www.missionexplore.co.uk/missions
And we've even gone all wizzy and modern and created an iphone app which is free to download - Download.
We're working on the next book now, and have got some other interesting things up our sleeves in the pipeline. But for now this is quite enough from me, I need to pack my wellies. Come and say hello if you're at Latitude, and if you get up to any missions....have a great one...and let us know how you get on.
All the best
Tom
Links
Latitude Festival
Latitude Festival Map
'Mission:Explore Latitude survival guide' Download
'Mission:Explore' books
