• Home
  • About

Peter G Knight

On the Road

Feeds:
Comments
« Glacial Geomorphology 101
A Geography Lecturer’s reflective diary exercise »

Stealing from Austin Kleon (Geography Blackout)

December 18, 2011 by petergknight

The American writer Austin Kleon, who wrote “Newspaper Blackout”, has also written a book called “Steal Like an Artist”, so I am hoping that he won’t mind that I have stolen his idea to help teach my Geography students. The picture here from Kleon’s website http://www.austinkleon.com illustrates what he does.

"Creativity is Subtraction" from austinkleon.com

As Kleon puts it: “Grab a newspaper. Grab a marker. Find an article. Cross out words, leaving behind the ones you like. Pretty soon you’ll have a poem.”

So how do I use this teaching Geography? The point I’m trying to make with the students is that Science is a way of exploring and understanding the world, but that there are other ways of exploring and understanding the world, and that sometimes those different approaches can help each other out. For example, as a Geographer you might often want to look closely at the world around you to see details that will help you to describe, understand and represent the way the world works. Science is one way of doing that. But I learned from my friend and colleague the artist Miriam Burke that a good way of forcing yourself to look carefully at something is to try to make art about it. Trying to make a picture or a model or a poem of something really makes you look closely at it. Art is a great way of exploring. That’s why, for me, art and Geography go nicely side by side.

So I took a copy of the first page of one of the basic course textbooks (“Geography – a Very Short Introduction” by J.A.Matthews and D.T.Herbert, 2008) and I started crossing out words. I asked the students to do the same. Now I’m sure there’s a whole psycho-pedagogic discourse on the traumatic consequences of making students cross out swathes of their text book. We’ll save that for a different blog. The point I want to record here is about how asking students to cross out most of the words in a page from the textbook makes them look much more closely at the original source than if we just asked them to read it. And if we insist that their Blackout Poem reflects the underlying meaning or core concept of the page they are editing (but that it must do more than simply abbreviate the content of the page), the activity seems to engage a whole new level of critical attention to the source (helping students to learn and think about the material) and at the same time switches on a creative or interpretive intellect that fixes the academic content of the original document into the mental context of the student’s own “work” on the piece. In other words, by USING the original document to create something new of their own, they get much more out of it.

This illustrates something I constantly tell students: that the best way to learn something is to use it for some purpose, especially if that involves communicating it to somebody. If you are struggling to understand glacier dynamics, set a date where you have to teach glacier dynamics to somebody who knows nothing about it.  It also illustrates nicely how doing something that appears to be non-academic can be a big help with your academic work. The value of play. If I can get my students to PLAY with their scientific source material… well, they’ll end up just like me!

I only came up with (sorry, stole) this idea a couple of days ago, but already I see huge scope ranging from fun little tutorial activities to major coursework projects. You could even do it just for Art. Oh, yeah, Austin Kleon already thought of that.  When I tweeted my first attempt at a Geography Blackout yesterday it quickly became far and away my most retweeted tweet ever, so this seems to have struck a chord with others, too.  And that’s why I thought I’d say just a little bit more about it here. For the record, here is that first attempt. My “Geography Blackout” redaction of the opening page of Matthews and Herbert (2008). I suspect there may be more to follow.

Gosh, I hope nobody steals this idea.

Peter Knight's "Exploration"

Peter Knight's "Exploration", inspired by Austin Kleon's "Newspaper Blackout" and by page 1 of "Geography - A Very Short Introduction" (Matthews and Herbert, 2008).

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Like this:

Like Loading...

Related

Posted in From the coal face | Tagged art, Austin Kleon, geography, inspiration, lectures, science, teaching, tutorials, writing | 2 Comments

2 Responses

  1. on January 10, 2014 at 6:03 pm And idea: a blackout book! | Peter G Knight

    […] written previously about “blackout poetry”, inspired by the work of Austin Kleon. (Here’s that previous post)  The idea is that you make a poem by blacking out most of the words on a printed page of a […]


  2. on August 30, 2014 at 10:24 am ‘Stock’ geography lessons Part 1

    […] Knight (@PKGeog) shared two excellent activities that he uses with undergraduate students, geography blackout and geography through the window tutorial.  I think this is a great introductory lesson in […]



Comments are closed.

  • Peter G Knight

    http://www.petergknight.com

  • Topics

    academia advice for a young academic art assessments Austin Kleon Clive James connections Dire Straits dissertations Douglas Adams entropy ephemeral Feynman geography geomorphology glacier Greenland Gustav Mahler Haiku imposter syndrome inspiration internet Italo Calvino John Keats Kerouac knowledge labels landscape learning lectures Leonard Bernstein lists lyrics maps matters of consequence misunderstandings music noticing opinions organising Pete Atkin poetry Proust reading reaktionglacier reflective diary religion Saturday Centus science St.Exupery students T.S.Eliot teaching The Little Prince The Truth this blog time Total-Geography travel tutorials university wilderness writing
  • Social

    • View petergknight’s profile on Facebook
    • View petergknight’s profile on Twitter
  • Categories

    • About this blog (5)
    • From base (18)
    • From the coal face (35)
    • From the road (11)
    • The Places We Have Known (3)
    • Total Geography (4)
  • Archives

    • June 2020 (2)
    • August 2019 (1)
    • March 2018 (1)
    • November 2016 (1)
    • July 2016 (1)
    • August 2015 (3)
    • May 2015 (1)
    • December 2014 (4)
    • October 2014 (1)
    • February 2014 (2)
    • January 2014 (1)
    • June 2013 (1)
    • March 2013 (2)
    • February 2013 (2)
    • December 2012 (1)
    • October 2012 (1)
    • August 2012 (2)
    • July 2012 (2)
    • May 2012 (1)
    • January 2012 (1)
    • December 2011 (1)
    • November 2011 (1)
    • October 2011 (1)
    • August 2011 (2)
    • July 2011 (1)
    • May 2011 (1)
    • April 2011 (4)
    • January 2011 (3)
    • October 2010 (1)
    • May 2010 (2)
    • April 2010 (3)
    • March 2010 (11)
  • Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

    Join 984 other subscribers
  • Top Posts & Pages

    • Advice for a young academic: imposter syndrome
    • The Rules of Writing
    • You can't go back, but you can go again
    • Bucket Lists
    • Advice for a young academic: the series
    • The Bridge at Kangerlussuaq
    • The few good lines that really count
    • Memory, plagiarism and the truth
    • An idea: a blackout book!
    • Academic new year: induction week

Blog at WordPress.com.

WPThemes.


Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Peter G Knight
    • Join 984 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Peter G Knight
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Copy shortlink
    • Report this content
    • View post in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: