Psychogeography: Kids Exploring the World

We’ve been playing at the idea of psychogeography for a few years. The gist of the study is to wander about an area of town—the same idea could of course be applied to the wilderness, but I don’t see it mentioned as often—paying attention to what you see, hear, smell, and how that makes you feel.The idea, broadly, the way I understand it, is to search for the transitions on your walk, paying attention to how you identified them.

It works out great for getting the gang out into the world. They get to go explore for themselves, and as if their every sense wasn’t already peeled on exploring a new place just because it’s new, they’re also focused on measuring the world around them as they experience it and relating those measurements to how they feel.

The whole thing is also very useful for getting neighborhoods used to the kids. I can anchor myself somewhere I want to be, then the kids can explore out in every widening radii that we both feel comfortable with, bringing back their experiences to share.

Best of all, when the gang travels with disposable cameras to document what they saw, I get to see what they see, and it’s fascinating—to me at any rate!

Here are some resources on the topic:

Robert MacFarlane, author of The Lost Words: A Spell Book describes psychogeography like this

“Word of the day: “psychogeography” - the exploration of cities & other landscapes by means of drift, play & randomly motivated walking, encouraging a re-imagining of familiar terrain & the exploration of how environments affect emotions & behaviour (coined by Guy Debord, 1955).”

And this

https://twitter.com/adambcqx/status/1083985237015695360?s=20&t=IR7nSPaXlGGmAUlijD5iww

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