Space for curiosity

Abstract

In education and creative industries, ordinary workplaces and everyday life, curiosity is widely regarded as a good thing, worthy of encouragement and support. This raises practical questions about how to be more curious and encourage curiosity in others. To bring these questions into focus, it helps to think geographically, asking: how can we find and make ‘space’ for curiosity? But curiosity is not simply a practical problem. Through spaces for curiosity, it is possible to raise more fundamental questions about what curiosity is and what it can be: about who can be curious, and what curiosity is for.

Emotional geographies experienced during international fieldwork: an evaluation of teaching and learning strategies for reflective assessment

“…Yet the experiences are far from being precise as they are characteristically "disruptive, unsystematic and random" (Richardson, 2015, p. 1). It is important that students are presented with opportunities to be curious about places and explore their own emotions in relation to their experience (Phillips, 2014).…”

Being surprised and surprising ourselves: A geography of personal and social change

“…Merriman, 2018). It thus bridges the gap between scholarship concerned with the macro-level of the neoliberal politics of anticipation (Anderson, 2010;Amin, 2013;Brown et al, 2012;Simon and Randalls, 2016) and scholarship focused on boredom, curiosity, whimsy, and enchantment, and, more generally, on the embodied and affect-laden dynamics of interruption and transition involved in the autopoiesis of personal futures (Anderson, 2004;Dawney, 2013;Mann, 2015;Phillips, 2014;Woodyer and Geoghegan, 2013;Worth, 2009). Not counting the customary introduction and conclusion, the paper is organized in two sections, as follows.…”

Lost in the ‘churn’? Locating neighbourliness in a transient neighbourhood

“…These types of encounters link well with Datta's (2009: 356-357) ideas about everyday localised cosmopolitanisms and the need to treat 'cosmopolitanism as a spatial concept'. The openness of the interactions between Joel and his neighbours, and more particularly his desire to learn about where they have come from, is perhaps a good example of everyday cosmopolitanism, and certainly of genuine curiosity, arguably an integral facet of any meaningful encounter (Phillips, 2014). However, as with the example of Joy and her neighbours, this is a social relationship of openness built around this family, at this time, in this place.…”