In November 2024, I was fortunate enough to attend Practical Pedagogies 3 in Cologne. Particularly as I'd already been to Iceland that half term which meant two trips away from family. It was another cracking event organised by Russel Tarr and hosted by a school just outside of the city, with provocations and entertainment by Hywel Roberts. The 2026 event is now open with a call for sessions.
"To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world – and at the same time that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are.”
Marshall Berman
One session I went to at Practical Pedagogies was by my friend Matt Podbury: who is also a colleague of the organiser Russel Tarr at the International School of Toulouse, where he teaches geography.
He had been trialling a new unit on music and its connections with our emotional landscape. This includes a look at favourite music, emotional music and lyrics, sense of place and also the connections with landscapes. It's a chance for younger students to be introduced to some of the classics as well.
For Matt that meant Pulp (with connections with Sheffield where he used to teach) and Queen.
The session was really nicely put together and presented. We will also come back to Sheffield again later in the blog as it has a great musical heritage.
Matt finished by showing a tool called SUNO, which is an AI tool that generates a musical track or song in just a few sentences, based on the prompts it is given.
One particularly nice aspect of the work was the creation of physical artefacts which were in the form of LPs. Matt had sourced blank white LP sleeves, and also some cheap €1 vinyl records. It also helps that he has a sizeable record collection dating back to the 1990s which he could use to model what we was hoping for.
The unit also had an element of emotional geographies about it.
Give it a look... and a go...
I've created a great song with Suno... it will appear later in the blog.
And Matt will be reprising this workshop in a joint session with me at the GA Conference in April 2026.
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