Friends and colleagues, the PyGyRG (Participatory Geographies Research Group)committee have booked an away weekend for the nights of 24th & 25th May 2019 at a really great little venue https://independenthostels.co.uk/members/fortwilliambackpackers/in Fort William – Scotland which if you have never been – is a stunning location. https://www.visitscotland.com/destinations-maps/fort-william/ . There are regular buses and trains via both Edinburgh and Glasgow (the train journey across Rannoch Moor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Highland_Line – is ‘to die for’ and ‘magic’ (cf. Skyfall and Harry Potter)
Put the date in your diaries.
But before we ask you to sign up we would like to ask you to participate in planning what the weekend should achieve, do, and focus on.
Suggestions please for themes (e.g. particular participatory methods, techniques or technologies, ethics, paradoxes and challenges, ‘getting started’, ‘sustainability’, politics of race/class/gender/sexuality, participatory approaches and theory (feminist, post-structural, post-colonial, affective, new-material or post-capitalist), participatory approaches ‘in’ or ‘and’ the academy, or geographies of participatory action research….. etc.?
Suggestions please for formats or activities (e.g. reading groups, show-and-tell, reflections from/on experience, a ‘confessional’/’advice help line’ session, practical activates, games, seminars, debates or screenings… and even… ‘formal’ short paper presentations [if that would help some people secure funding from their own institutions]). Would you like to work the whole time, or would you like time to talk and walk, drink and talk … etc?
Send your ideas in two or three lines to the away weekend organising committee: Mike Kesby mgk@st-andrews.ac.uk Eveleigh Buck-Matthews eveleigh.bm@hotmail.com and Francesca Fois frf4@aber.ac.uk and we will attempt to plan a weekend that you will find enjoyable and rewarding.
Please send you suggestions by Fri Nov 17th – and soon after that, we will circulate an invitation to sign up for the weekend. For those who book early there will be opportunity to book independently for an extra day or two to explore the highlands.
We hope to have a number of bursaries available for those that require them – more news on that soon.
