Mission:Explore

A number of us who first started this Guerrilla Geography blog are now focusing our attentions on the Mission:Explore project.

To find out more visit The Geography Collective blog and the Mission:Explore website.

Safe Identities?

People, place and identity

The next GG action is planned for Saturday 24^th January, to coincide with ‘Engaging Geography’ (see http://engaginggeography.wordpress.com ). It will take place in Newcastle-upon-Tyne city centre, 3-5pm … details of meeting point will be posted nearer the time.

This event is intended to raise questions and promote debate around the introduction of identity cards in the UK, and their impact on people’s everyday geographies. Members of the public will be offered ‘free identity cards’: one side listing some of the information that will be included on the cards, to invite the public to think about the implications of this (eg. going to a ‘biometric enrolment centre’ to be fingerprinted); the other side listing some broader questions/issues around space, place, citizenship …eg "Can you trust the government of 20 years from now?"

Please come and join us, whether you want to come to some or all of the engaging geography event (at the Star and Shadow cinema in Newcastle) or not …

RSVP in the Guerrilla Geography Facebook group.

Manchester: Beyond Naughtiness

Start Time:	Friday, June 20, 2008 at 5:00pm
End Time:	Sunday, June 22, 2008 at 5:00pm
Location:	Manchester
City/Town:	Manchester, United Kingdom

The next major Guerrilla Geography event is being held in Manchester on Saturday 21st June to coincide with the TRIP conference (http://trip2008.wordpress.com/). In this event the public will be asked to (anonymously) give information about a naughty memory within Manchester city centre. The place of this event will be recorded onto a map, and the details of the event will be recorded by audio device. Ultimately this information will be used to map the geography of naughtiness within Manchester: a direct link between public activity and geographical thinking. It is hoped that the map and information will be displayed as a piece of conceptual art in time for the GA conference 2009 in Manchester.

There will be cheap accommodation on the Friday and Satuday evenings, and rural exploration and rambling on the Sunday.

You are welcome to come to some of this, all of this or none of this(and then lie and say you were cool and that you did and it was great).

Full details on Facebook...

Upstaged?

A few weeks back Guerrilla Geographers started up a group on Facebook called 'We're going to change Britain.' A few weeks later the group is nearly 50,000 strong and off the back of this geographical conversation and campaign we entered Upstaged, a talent show on BBC 3 in which you are given 6 hours to out perform another act on a sister stage. See how we got on here and watch additional clips of our efforts in the news archive for Tuesday the 11th of March.

1st British Waterboarding Championships

In direct response to the recent debate around if Waterboarding is torture, guerrilla geographers inverted the practice into a competitive sport and held the first British Waterboarding Championships in central London last Saturday.


Two teams entered the competition with one single aim... to see who could stand being Waterboarded the longest in a head to head knock-out challenge. The Blue Team and Black Team, both made up of Guerrilla Geographers took turns in being boarded by the opposition as competitors had two turns to see how long they could last. At first both teams struggled to make even 30 seconds, but by the end of the day some competitors lasted nearly a full minute.

The embassy of the United States of America was the backdrop to the first round of the competition. Competitors took turns in having a wet cloth stuffed into their mouth and over their nose before having water poured onto their faces continually until they tapped the ground to show that they could last no longer. As they breathed water through their noses and into their lungs each competitor found it harder and harder to beat their rival. Unlike secret, invisible and private Waterboarding carried out by security serivces - the competitors could stop when they wanted and knew that they were in control of the situation. Despite this, all of the competitors felt fear and panic as their bodies were slowly starved of oxygen.

The Guerrilla Geographers are now calling for Waterboarding to become a recognised Olympic sport ready for the 2012 games in London. A spokesman for the movement said "Part of the reason why London was awarded the 2012 Olympic games was the innovative use of iconic locations for the sporting events such as Horse Guards for the Volleyball. Grosvenor's Square, home to the US Embassy or Millbank opposite MI6 were home to our championships and would serve as ideal locations for the 2012 games." The geographers are hoping to have support of the present United States government which is openly supportive of Waterborading.

All photographs by Bruno Vincent

For a full justification of the competition, read Jon Cloke's call for participation.

Guerrilla Geographers... forcing people to see our world(s) in new ways

BBC (up)staged Guerrilla Geography?

We're having a crack at taking over a stage on the new BBC 3 programme upstaged. We're focusing on recruiting 2 million people to be more friendly to each other on journeys and generally around the place, but we'll also be getting up to some good psychogeography guerrilla fun. We'd be delighted to here your ideas and even more delighted if you would sign into the Upstaged website, become our fan, vote for our video and get us unto the show!

http://upstaged.external.bbc.co.uk/We're+going+to+change+Britain.


If you're a geographer and have something to bring to the stage do let us know at guerrillageography@gmail.com. We need geographers to go out and do some urban exploration, attempt to be friendly to the public and speak to us about why it is that some places in the country are just so much more friendly than others....