Author: Eliya Ribak
In last summer’s Liberal Studies symposium in London, I was inspired by one of the sessions to add a London cultural exploration project. I wanted students to compare in an experiential way the London of the past to the London of the present and try to understand how the city’s culture has changed from their assigned period to today. I had intended the project to help students understand what culture is and how it expresses itself in an urban setting.
I created the Mapping London, Past and Present Group Project for this purpose. I divided the class into groups and each group received a map of a specific area of London from a specific period in its history. The students were asked to explore and map (on their own, not by resorting to Google Maps) the area they had been assigned and to compare the area as it is today with the area as it was in the map they were given. They were asked to consider street layout, prominent buildings, dating and use, as well as any man-made changes to the geography of this area, and then to reach a conclusion about how the area had changed and what these changes suggested about the culture of London and Britain.
The project culminated in a class presentation in which students used creatively curated and original audio-visual materials – such as maps, illustrations, photographs and short videos – to animate their discussion. My students certainly rose to the challenge: below are a few photographs and a video of their work.
