Alan Machin: Tourism As Education

Click here for the Leeds Met Tourism Alumni page

Regular visitors will have note the web site has been rather neglected recently - the distraction is work in progress on a book about tourism as education ..... but more of that later. Meanwhile, it's time to do some catching up on earlier stories...

-oOo-

Movie Films as Souvenirs

Above is a Pathescope Baby film projector. The famous French company who designed and sold it worldwide from late 1922 onwards was also involved in making cinema newsreels - the Pathe News series. Every cinema at one time ran short news films as part of their programmes, until the effectiveness of TV news broadcasts made them outdated. This projector used Pathe's 9.5mm film, almost as good as the 16mm film at the same time. It was a film gauge that lasted until about 1960. Pathe had started out using 28mm film in 1912 but replaced it with the narrower gauge. There were advantages to the production of commercial films from master copies when using the narrower film. In addition, because it had a single line of sprocket holes down the middle of the film, one rectangular hole between every frame, the picture area was quite large, and certainly much better than the later Kodak 8mm film. The company boasted that given the lower magnification required when projecting its 9.5mm film onto a screen compared with the Edison-invented 35mm commercial film, that its own was the best on the market. There were some disadvantages though, such as the clarity of image across the frame not being quite even because the sprocket-hole position affected the printing. Nonetheless film buffs often consider it was at least one of the best, certainly for the amateur user. Like the downfall of Betamax video in the 1980s against VHS it was a story of Pathe being unable to compete with the marketing effort of Kodak’s 8mm size, even though that film had only a quarter of the picture area.

The Baby was originally a hand-cranked projector, and the one shown here was a version capable of being operated that way. However, as can be seen, this one was an enhanced model for which the customer had bought the two extension arms fitted to carry up to 300-foot reels of film, running for about ten minutes. Also fitted is an electric motor driving a pulley wheel that has replaced the hand winder. The overall effect might be thought rather Heath Robinson in style – or to US users, Rube Goldberg, to Swiss customers, Jean Tinguely – in other words, a weird concoction of bolted and hooked-on bits and pieces. This projector is in my own collection and it enjoys a prominent display position because it is beautifully designed and engineered and quite different from other projectors. It contrasts with the Paillard Bolex machine that will feature in the next posting: that one is as sleek as a kitten while this one looks like that gawky predator, the Secretary Bird. Domesticated, of course.

On the left is a clockwork-driven Pathe camera for 9.5mm. The first were hand-cranked like the projector. Then Pathe introduced a clamp-on motor attachment which was of a similar size. The powered camera soon followed. It had fixed focus, variable exposure setting and a fixed lens and parallel viewer. Being relatively small and light (it is seen here a little bigger than it would appear in relation to the projector) it could be carried by travellers with ease.

Also shown is a 1952 catalogue of Pathe films; a metal cassette which held a 1-minute Mickey Mouse cartoon - its box is behind it; a 2-minute film in its box, this one being a travel film; and a rather-less-than ten minute film inside its cardboard case. There was a wide range of cartoon, western, drama and documentary films including quite a number of travelogues. Frame enlargements from some are included here. One is from a film about the Thames – when projected, like the others, the film shows its scratches through considerable use and the frame jerks with the wearing of the sprocket holes for the same reason. That film came from the Pathe company. So did the little drama, shot in a studio, about big-game hunters shooting a leopard. The dead animal is seen being carried off by two native bearers. For most tourists now the camera would replace the gun. The third film was shot on a camera like the one here and shows the South Bay Pool at Scarborough around 1950 or so. The film itself has the usual folk on the beach, sat in deckchairs, kids building sandcastles, mum and dad grinning and waving at the camera, living on in a sense from six decades ago. Which was exactly what the home movie was all about.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

A Great Name in Home Movies

While Pathé Frères were developing 9.5mm film in Paris the Eastman Kodak Company was working on its amateur system based on 16mm film. It introduced it the year after Pathé switched to 9.5mm – 1923. The 16mm gauge became well established but was more expensive and Kodak devised a clever alternative in 8mm, known as ‘double run’ film. It was really 16mm film which was run through a camera with a framing system using only half the width. At the end of the cassette film’s run the photographer had to take out the cassette and reinsert it the other way round, rather like a compact cassette audio tape. The film was then used again with the camera recording new images on the other half of the film’s length. When sent to Kodak for processing the film was accurately slit down the middle and the two halves spliced together. This meant that the standard Kodak 16mm film could be used to supply users of 8mm, although there was a difference in that it was punched with twice as many sprocket holes than 16 to improve the precision of running through the camera and projector. However the narrow film with its single line of holes down one side could only be used for images 4.5mm wide. Compare that with the 8.5mm width of image on 9.5mm film – and, incidentally, the 10.26mm achieved with standard 16mm film. Standard-8 film, as it came to be called later, had about the tiniest images to be found on any gauge of film.

The ‘Great Name’ in this posting is neither Pathé nor Eastman, but Paillard Bolex. That is a company name which stems from two important technical innovators – Möise Paillard and Jacques Bogopolsky. The first was Swiss, the second Ukrainian but living in Geneva. Paillard founded a watch- and music box-making business in 1814 in Sainte-Croix, Switzerland, Bogopolsky invented a combined 35mm camera and projector aimed at the amateur market in 1924. Four years later Bogopolsky launched his Autocine A camera, followed by his matching projector, having combined with the Paillard Company to manufacture them under the Bolex model name. Paillard Bolex would become one of the most revered names in cinematography, mainly for 16 and 8mm, though they also marketed a 9.5mm version. Their cameras and projectors have a quality which reflects their watch-making ancestry, precise and with a jewel-like quality.

The film company Castle supplied a range of features for 8mm and 16mm. It had been set up by Eugene W Castle, an ex-news film cameraman, in 1924. At first the Company produced business films including advertising, but in 1937 turned to home entertainment titles and these quickly dominated the output. Castle gained the rights to make home movie newsreels and the first of these showed the horrifyingly spectacular destruction of the airship ‘Hindenburg’ when it arrived in Lakehurst, New Jersey, in 1937. Ten years later an arm of Universal Pictures took a majority stake-holding in Castle and increased its catalogue with new subjects. Travelogues and documentaries were one of the distributor’s staples throughout the company’s existence. This ended in 1984 with the onslaught of video sales. As new technologies took over the home market it is interesting to note the cultural changes happening as well. The French travelogue pictured, which would often have been pronounced “Gay Paree” in pseudo-French style, would mean something quite different today.

The panel on the right is from the projector manual (the Paillard Bolex M8, one of the best machines, sold from 1949 onwards). It describes sound-synchronisation add-ons for the projector using a tape recorder and special control unit, or a different version using a sound-track stripe to be added to the home movie which was then fed through a device called a Sonorizer.

There are two cameras shown, both 8mm. The larger H8 is virtually identical to Paillard Bolex's 16mm machines, many of which were used from the 1950s onwards to make professional films including TV productions. Being an 8mm camera it did not turn out the same quality but it was still a high grade machine. The smaller C8 camera with its three lenses appeared first in 1954 and followed the B8 of a year before with two lenses. Reflex viewfinder versions of these machines, in which the viewfinder used the light path through whichever lens was in use, were launched later, as were zoom lensed models.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Click here to explore another tasty web site cooked up next door to this one!

A Cabin in Kentucky

A visit to family in Kentucky in December 2011 gave chance to update on the Old Rice Farm project described on the page listed below.

My daughter Victoria (photo, bottom row, right) and her husband Jay (cooking pancakes in the picture next to Victoria) have land in ‘The Hollow’ – pronounced ‘holler’ by local folks. For Vicky and Jay it’s a place for weekend trips – at least at the moment. And it’s a lovely place for the children to explore as they grow up.

That ‘cabin’ is what in the UK we might consider a house. It has all the usual mod cons (though internet and mobile access is poor until upgrades get carried out nearby), two bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen, and sitting room. And it has that American folklore staple, a porch or veranda running along the front and side where you can either sit and think – or just sit. Or you can barbecue venison, wild turkey or hog meat as they’re all available in the woodlands around. There is another cabin here now, also timber-built, but this time with porch roof supports planed smooth, not cut from young trees and left rustic, and that’s maybe why it’s actually referred to as a house.

The land is spread round Old Rice Farm, late 18th century by origin and close to the location of Daniel Boone’s exploration base of Station Camp on the Red Lick valley. The settlement by European-origin people spreading west of the original thirteen colonies was led by the Boone expedition from here after its famous crossing of the Cumberland Gap from Tennessee. Other white explorers had entered the lands earlier, but it was Daniel Boone’s party of loggers who cleared and built the trail that opened up a route for settlers to move west more easily.

It’s difficult for city visitors – especially those from Britain – to appreciate the feel of this kind of landscape where towns are small and scattered, with many miles of wooded hills and small-farmed valleys in between. Standing on a hill as Daniel Boone famously did to view the land gives much the same panorama that he would have had – tree-covered horizons still, now with habitations like dots in the cleared valleys. At night – darkness; none of the glowing sky that canopies urban landscapes.

The cabin, that house and a work-shed/barn under construction occupy sloping ground draining by a creek out into the valley of the Red Lick as it works towards the Kentucky River. In December winter had stripped the trees of leaves but had not yet added snow. Clear skies prevailed, bright with sunshine in the short day but cold in the hill shadows that followed during the late afternoon. The creek – not yet given a name – has no bridges, but little rain had fallen to deepen its flow, so careful placing of boots made it easy to splash across. Making a trek into the woods meant a gradual climb between the trees, avoiding brambles where possible and working round fallen trees. This hollow of around 250 acres is gouged out from the hard rock hills. It rises steeply on three sides to a sharp cliff-edge which has to be climbed with care. The woods grow wild. As the trees grow old and fall they lie where they hit the ground to rot away undisturbed. Once, narrow tracks were cut for timbering, a careful selection of trees felled and taken out commercially. Only once so far. And good practice will demand a wait of a decade or more until another carefully cutting takes place.

There is open space around Old Rice Farm itself at the roadside edge of the hollow, but the people living there do not farm but rely on work in town several miles away. Between the new cabin, house and barn the ground is rough but cleared. We spent an afternoon taking out fallen trunks, brushwood and old waste timber clogging the edge of the creek, making a blazing bonfire of it all. This was not being wasteful. The woods are rich with fallen trees where the cycle of rotting and renewal can take its natural course on a grand scale.

We moved indoors as darkness fell. Coffee was poured, visitors welcomed, the four-year old played and the month old baby was fed. Brady, who built the cabins, and his partner, had arrived. That’s him in the hat.

This is not city life. Nor is it anything like the way hill-country Kentucky is often portrayed in the media – simple-minded, unsophisticated and backward. There is a sense of community which is welcoming and supportive with a strong sense of what it wants to be. What it wants to be might be quite different from what city folk want to be – but this is not the city, it’s a scattered rural community set between farmland valleys and wooded mountains. It shapes its life accordingly.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Exploring is like doing a jigsaw puzzle

A page listed on the left ("Jigsaw frameworks of knowledge") is about the parallel between building knowledge of the world and doing a jigsaw puzzle. I'm going to revisit those ideas a little. Here's a view of part of London from the London Eye Ferris wheel - made into a jigsaw.

A tourist explores a destination not only using all five senses but accumulated information. The graphic above, right - about Paris, - suggests visual elements. There are many sounds – voices, noises, music and so on, easily visualised – whoops, imagined. Add on to those tactile elements from the feel of walking and touched surfaces mentioned above, and the sensation of a breeze, possibly water from rain, paddling and swimming, or even the touch of a handshake or a kiss with someone at the destination, and you can appreciate more of the potential. Smell? Flowers, grass, the sea air, cooking – just some of the positive ones – there are plenty of negative ones, too. Of course which is which is a matter of personal interpretation. Taste? Salt on the lips close to the sea... food and drink. These sensations flow in through the five physiological channels, having arrived possibly through media channels – mainly sound and vision, but what about thinking of the medium of a restaurant for taste and smells, for examples. They come in combinations or individual perceptions, though those are rarer: we see the sound source as well as hear the sound most of the time, and the combination affects our perception of what we hear. The four Ss of tourism are sun, sand, sea and sex. I leave you to think of the numbers of sensory channels each might involve; the intensity of them and the level of interactive messaging that each will carry.

Cincinnati..... Black History Centre Faces Possible Closure

This 18 December 2011 news from the Middletown Journal, serving a community just north of Cincinnati (included here verbatim, original spelling):

Economic hardships could cause Cincinnati's National Underground Railroad Freedom Center to close by the end of 2012, if it can't find $1.5 million a year to cover future budgets. Despite having cut its annual operating expenses from $12.5 million when it opened in 2004 to $4.6 million this year, the museum is struggling to stay open, The Cincinnati Enquirer reported.

"We're operating the museum and programming at bare bones," said Kim Robinson, Freedom Center president and chief executive officer. "We're scratching and clawing." John Pepper, board co-chair for the Freedom Center and former CEO of Procter & Gamble, said additional reductions will bring the budget to $4 million, but annual revenues are projected at $2.5 million, leaving the $1.5 million shortfall. The center has sliced its full-time work force from 120 to 34.

The Freedom Center is looking at ways to increase revenue. It has paid off its mortgage and is considering raising money from tenants, naming rights, investment in other nonprofits' social programs and bringing in a full-scale restaurant — complete with a liquor — license to replace its current cafe. Pepper and fellow co-chair the Rev. Damon Lynch Jr. are calling on potential donors here and abroad, private and corporate.

Though attendance is up slightly in 2011 over last year and still higher than the national museum median of 80,000, it has been steadily declining since a peak in 2005. Center leaders acknowledge an initial business plan that was flawed, but say they are now getting it right. "We humbly yet earnestly call on the good citizens of the community to help us," Robinson said. "Now is not the time to give up. It's the time to come together and help us fulfill the great promise of this institution."

Some local critics say the large number of students visiting the museum on field trips pads the attendance, and those students don't generate much revenue. Robinson says the center received $6 per student of the $12 admission price and the difference is made up by private donors. Critics also say they don't want any more taxpayer money spent on the museum. About $250,000 of the center's annual revenue is from the federal government, but the museum won't receive any state, county or city money after this year. Cincinnati provided a $300,000 grant in 2011 after giving nothing in 2009 or 2010, and the Ohio Cultural Facilities commission authorized an $850,000 grant in February after Pepper signed a personal guarantee.

"My position and COAST's position is we want it to survive and thrive and be a nice addition to the city — without tax dollars," said Cincinnati attorney Christopher Finney. Finney leads the anti-tax group Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes (COAST). Finney disputes an economic impact study by the Research and Consulting Division of the Economics Center at the University of Cincinnati that indicated the center brought $26 million to the region by attracting visitors and conventions. COAST argues that at least one-fourth of the center's visitors are part of school groups that don't stay in hotels, eat in local restaurants or shop.

> The above report emphasises the problems faced by many in tourism working within an economic and social context where many issues affect future plans and therefore successful operations.

The Freedom Center has an important part to play in telling the story of black people in the United States during the era of slavery. Ohio was a northern, non-slavery State. The Freedom Center looks across the River Ohio towards Kentucky which used to be a slave State. The buildings are large and prestigious, placed in downtown Cincinnati. On the one hand this puts the story of the 'Underground 'Railway' which helped blacks escape from slavery in the south right at the heart of urban American. But it also costs a great deal to be where it is on prime commercial land.

Click here for a description of the Freedom Center on a previous page

____________________________________________________

Cincinnati Museums Centre

The Cincinnati Museums Centre is one of the best helping people explore their world enjoyably. It isn't primarily a collection of historic and modern objects - it's a museum that has created story-lines about history, natural history and science. It has an OmniMax theatre. There are a well-stocked and varied shops full of books, toys, souvenirs and collectors’ items to delight visitors and help them follow up what they have explored in the museum. A large entrance-concourse has food counters and space for sitting and eating. And it is all housed in the former Cincinnati Union Railroad station, a spectacular art deco building, carefully converted for its new uses.

Cincinnati Union Terminal opened in 1933. Before that the city had been served chaotically by seven railroad systems using five stations between them. A better facility was discussed for thirty years before the successful new project, but delayed by the 1917-18 war and squabbles. But at last wisdom prevailed, $41m was spent and one of the world’s finest stations was opened. A huge half-dome structure stood at the top of a magnificent approach. Curving entrance tunnels crossed under it carrying automobiles, coaches and a trolley service. Eight platforms ran at a slight angle behind the half-dome, designed to carry 17,000 passengers a day. By World War II they handled 20,000. However, after the war the competition from air travel and new Interstate highways began a sharp decline. By the early 1970s only two passenger trains were using the station each day, though the freight yards were busy. In 1972 passenger facilities were withdrawn. In 1980 a developer converted the Terminal into a shopping mall, but the financial time was not good and it quickly failed.

Then, after a gap of nineteen years, the newly-created Amtrak system returned some passenger services to Cincinnati, and these still operate. New life for the main building came between 1985 and 1990 in the form of the Cincinnati Museums Centre (I use the UK-English spelling) with its three subject galleries, Omnimax Theatre, food services and shops. It also houses historical archives and the Cincinnati Railroad Club, Inc. The city’s former Mayor, Jerry Springer, was one of the main proponents of the new project.

Above are some views of a visit made in early December 2011.

Click here for the Cincinnati Museums Centre web site

Another high hit level on one day - 4,384 on 30 October 2011 - second-highest for this web site since launching in January 2005.
Highest ever: 22 February 2011: 5,841 hits
Third highest: 4,191 on 19th October 2011
Current additions are to the Leeds Met Tourism Alumni page (Alumni News - see the list to the left)

Showcases 10: The Mareoama

At the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900 visitors could take a trip from France to Japan without leaving the city.

To do so they entered a five-storey building near the Eiffel Tower – itself a reminder of the previous exposition in 1889. The space inside was occupied by a large steam ship mounted on steel supports which could make it pitch and roll as if at sea. The ‘travellers’ stood or sat on the open deck of their liner, shielded from the imaginary Mediterranean sun by a canvas canopy – as shown in the postcard view seen above. Crew members bustled about their business and were on hand to help out in case anyone felt seasick. As the ship moved the passengers looked out to each side and saw the port of Marseilles slipping behind them. The open sea approached. Algeria, Italy and Turkey were each seen in turn (it was a superbly fast voyage!). Then the Suez Canal (built by French engineers) was passed through. The Indian Ocean with Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and then the islands of South East Asia came and went. At last the ship made port in Yokohama.

The Scientific American engraving above right shows the 70m ‘ship’ on its mount, and the scenery can be glimpsed to either side. Huge canvas rolls, 750m by 13m, mounted vertically, unwound slowly from in front of the ship, passed one to each side and were rolled up out of sight to the stern. The organiser of the spectacle was Hugo d’Alesi, a painter of advertising posters. D’Alesi has spent a year travelling from Marseilles to Japan and back, sketching scenes along the way. He then had a small army of painters produce a continuous view on each canvas according to a design that he laid out. This took eight months. He called the show the ‘Mareorama’.

As the supposed voyage progressed the vessel pitched and rolled thanks to the machinery supporting it. Smoke poured from the funnel. Seaweed and tar provided appropriate smells. Fans gave a breeze. Lighting shone bright for daytime effect and dimly for night, and could give flashes to simulate lightning while theatrical thunder was heard. There was the noise of the ship’s propeller and siren.

This was a development combining huge panoramic paintings with theatrical special effects. From the late eighteenth century visitors had entered purpose-built theatre to stand at the centre of a circular room admiring fixed panoramic depictions of the view from tall buildings such as London’s St Paul’s Cathedral, or the scene of great battles of recent memory. Some of these panoramas had carefully-arranged objects in front of them on the floor, like cannon or correctly scaled buildings rolling canvas backdrops across a stage was a common stage device for showing travel or changing scenes. A stage show in England had presented the story of a voyage along the country’s east coast to Scotland in the 1820s. Others later on placed their audience onto a supposed ship and rolled past them two canvases, one to ‘port’, one to ‘starboard’. Hugo d’Alesi’s show was to be the last great development of the idea, giving the audience access as if on board a ship, then using effects to engage four of an audience’s senses to create the travel illusion. But the early forms of cinema were arriving and captured the imagination as well as the market at lower cost and in far more centres. The Mareorama would be the last of the line. In America, however, the two forms of show were for a while combined when a man called Hale set up a railroad carriage on rockable supports and shone film onto screens behind the carriage windows. The film had been shot by a cameraman standing on the front of a travelling locomotive. ‘Hales Tours’ appeared in the USA and Europe for a time.

Coming together in the Mareorama were elements of the art gallery, the theatre and the museum in order to present an illusion through sight, sound, movement and aromas. Expositions, museums and theme parks would all make techniques like these part of their stock in trade. Travelling the globe or hurtling into space would be popular subjects for this kind of show for ever more.

To find more information, look at
Coe, Brian (1981) The History of Movie Photography, London, Ash and Grant
Comment, Bernard (1999) The Panorama, London, Reaktion Books
Wikipedia – article on The Mareorama

-oOo

Click here for theories and examples of Showcases

Towards Theory - Environment As Data

Anyone - it doesn't have to be a tourist (or even a human being, come to that) - placed in a given environment will use five senses to relate to that environment. Some scientists will point to a probable sixth sense based on electrical signals - some fish have it; whether we do is not in my line of knowledge so that possibility will be omitted for the moment.

Vision is perhaps the most important sense to be used, hence the "Tourist Gaze" of John Urry (1990) mentioned in the previous posting on 31 December. We see a vast amount of detail very quickly and locate it relative to ourselves very easily, thanks to a wide arc of view and binocular vision. We can see attractive places, potential dangers, identify people with a high degree of perception about who they are and so on. Sight allows us to read their body language.

Tourist managers concentrate a lot of effort on manipulating our percpetions of their places, by making them attractive, keeping them well maintained and trying to ensure there are no hostile activities going on within them.

Sound is important. It's a bit more more difficult to locate its origins at times but it brings very rapid, strong perceptions which can be good, bad or neutral. Sound can range from a brief emanation from an otherwise inanimate object - such as the whistle of an approaching train - through longer-lasting patterns like the noise of the train as it arrives or the song of a bird. Or it could be a warning siren on a police car, or maybe the music played by a band parading. At its greatest complexity it can be in the form of spoken language of hugely varied character, according to the language used, mode of speech (face to face, by telephone or public announcement system).

Touch depends on ourselves and what we are doing. It is more a product of interactivity, or we might say, proactivity. Walking on a beach produces tactile sensations, themselves dependent on whether we have footware or not. The texture of stone, brickwork, grass, water, textiles, skin and fur depends on how contact is made (do we reach out or are we reached by something?). Interpersonal contact - shaking hands or exchanging kisses on meeting - tells us a huge amount about each other, and happens to bring in the possibility of smell and taste sensations. Tourism managers make prime use of sound from conversation to background music, or sound effects in an exhibition, or a whole panoply of sound in a stage performance.

The sense of smell is not always appreciated, yet as Marcel Proust wrote concerning those small cakes, it can be enormously evocative. Perhaps this is because we actively employ it rather less so when it imapcts it really does strike home. A person's odour, natural or artificial thanks to perfume; the scent of flowers, of new-mown grass, the sea, a farmyard -all play their parts daily in tourism. Smells can be managed - those little electrical units slowly burning special oils that help museum displays come alive are a good example: of newly baked bread in a reconstructed bakery, for example. Noxious smells which serve to warn humans of potential problems - of decay, pollution, leaking gas or dangerous liquids - have to be managed.

Taste is most important in the special environment of a restauraunt or food shop offering samples. Outdoor environments offer few examples - eating local food outdoors is not actually an encounter with the environment itself - but one that is noteworthy and well remembered is the taste of salt spray on the lips when near to the sea. That, and the cry of seagulls, is often recalled amongst the memories of seaside holidays as a source of pleasure.

Environments will contain different levels of sensation-causing items or events. A city like New York (Times Square pictured) is packed with the sources used by all five sensations (counting food in the delicatessen as part of it), especially as there are neon signs, traffic lights and video screens busily calling for our attention. At the other extreme a desert, grassland plain, snowscape or open ocean will have far fewer, although still contain a multiplicity of constantly-changing sources. In every environment the addition of people and their activities will add more sources according to their number and actions.

Tourists depend on their senses and any loss or damage caused to them require appropriate special assistance. Tourist managers always attempt to maintain better standards within their areas to give the best impression. The best managers understand the full range of senses that will be in play and how to get the best advantage from every one of them.

-oOo-

Click here for more on New Theories for Tourism: Environments as Data

Click here to send me a comment

How We Used To Live

Whatever the reason for wanting to gaze on the past it has to be said it’s a popular activity. It might be in awe or in anger that we look at great houses like Attingham (top left, above). Are they to be looked up to or resented as symbols of the inequalities in society?

Lord Berwick’s 1785 mansion was given a classical-style column-and-pediment face to impress friends and enemies alike in a statement of wealth, learning and leadership. How modern viewers see it depends as much on their own standpoint as on eighteenth century cultural values. Does the fact that Attingham is now owned by the National Trust “on behalf of the nation” alter the way we see it? Who are the masters now, we might ask. Well, the answer isn’t greatly different – it’s those in charge, as it has always been. We can call in any time we like (standard opening hours and admission charges apply) but we can’t use it as our own to entertain, wine, dine and sleep over as if we really did own the house. But then neither can anyone else. Saving something for the nation imposes rules on everyone about how the house and its contents are handled whether you’re the site manager or a coach party tourist. It’s an interesting thought that we might want to poke around in someone’s flat in an inner city tower block, but we can’t unless we’re related to the occupier or a friend of theirs. But we can waltz up to a place like Attingham and be shown around (most of it) by polite staff trained in giving good customer service. For a mix of historical reasons it’s usually the posh places that have an open door policy. OK, they’re generally full of high quality, exotic cultural goodies, but I bet any home would have fascinating stories to tell about its own occupier through the stuff it has inside. Occupied spaces are showcases, too.

Some of the treasures shown in these photos are officially showcases – the top row – while the others are private – the bottom row. Externally they’re all show pieces of a kind, at least if they can be viewed from a public place. Internally the top row are properties open to inspection, praise and criticism at some time or other (Benthall Hall, second left, at best only on three afternoons a week). Those on the bottom row are highly exclusive and you will need the owner’s permission and a very special reason to get inside them. They are houses in (left to right) Ironbridge, Much Wenlock – two and three – and Bromfield).

Shropshire has a rich selection of houses of all kinds to please or disappoint the visitor. The feeling of open space, attractive farmland and delightful vernacular style makes the county a favourite of many. There are lots of properties that leave the traveller cold just as there are anywhere, and a few that cause expressions of disgust – we passed a rural house several times that is painted pink all over and has bright pink flowers crawling up the wall and which made us make disparaging noises every time. The owner presumably loves it (they probably have a pink car with flowers stencilled all over it). The top row runs from the home of the super-rich (Attingham: Berwick family) through the pretty rich (Benthall Hall; George Maw, industrialist) to a representation of a worker’s cottage (Blists Hill Museum) and a shepherd’s temporary home while tending his sheep (a hut on wheels at Acton Scott Farm Museum).

Click here to access over a hundred of Blog postings about Tourism As Education

Above: a selection of excellent books relevant to Tourism As Education

*

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Towards Theory - Environment As Data

[Original posting on this web site: 01.01.07]

Anyone - doesn't have to be a tourist (or even a human being, come to that) - placed in a given environment will use five senses to relate to that environment. Some scientists will point to a probable sixth sense based on electrical signals - some fish have it; whether we do is not in my line of knowledge so that possibility will be omitted for the moment.

Vision is perhaps the most important sense to be used, hence the "Tourist Gaze" of John Urry (1990) mentioned in the previous posting on 31 December. We see a vast amount of detail very quickly and locate it relative to ourselves very easily, thanks to a wide arc of view and binocular vision. We can see attractive places, potential dangers, identify people with a high degree of perception about who they are and so on. Sight allows us to read their body language.

Tourist managers concentrate a lot of effort on manipulating our percpetions of their places, by making them attractive, keeping them well maintained and trying to ensure there are no hostile activities going on within them.

Sound is important. It's a bit more more difficult to locate its origins at times but it brings very rapid, strong perceptions which can be good, bad or neutral. Sound can range from a brief emanation from an otherwise inanimate object - such as the whistle of an approaching train - through longer-lasting patterns like the noise of the train as it arrives or the song of a bird. Or it could be a warning siren on a police car, or maybe the music played by a band parading. At its greatest complexity it can be in the form of spoken language of hugely varied character, according to the language used, mode of speech (face to face, by telephone or public announcement system).

Touch depends on ourselves and what we are doing. It is more a product of interactivity, or we might say, proactivity. Walking on a beach produces tactile sensations, themselves dependent on whether we have footware or not. The texture of stone, brickwork, grass, water, textiles, skin and fur depends on how contact is made (do we reach out or are we reached by something?). Interpersonal contact - shaking hands or exchanging kisses on meeting - tells us a huge amount about each other, and happens to bring in the possibility of smell and taste sensations. Tourism managers make prime use of sound from conversation to background music, or sound effects in an exhibition, or a whole panoply of sound in a stage performance.

The sense of smell is not always appreciated, yet as Marcel Proust wrote concerning those small cakes, it can be enormously evocative. Perhaps this is because we actively employ it rather less so when it imapcts it really does strike home. A person's odour, natural or artificial thanks to perfume; the scent of flowers, of new-mown grass, the sea, a farmyard -all play their parts daily in tourism. Smells can be managed - those little electrical units slowly burning special oils that help museum displays come alive are a good example: of newly baked bread in a reconstructed bakery, for example. Noxious smells which serve to warn humans of potential problems - of decay, pollution, leaking gas or dangerous liquids - have to be managed.

Taste is most important in the special environment of a restauraunt or food shop offering samples. Outdoor environments offer few examples - eating local food outdoors is not actually an encounter with the environment itself - but one that is noteworthy and well remembered is the taste of salt spray on the lips when near to the sea. That, and the cry of seagulls, is often recalled amongst the memories of seaside holidays as a source of pleasure.

Environments will contain different levels of sensation-causing items or events. A city like New York (Times Square pictured) is packed with the sources used by all five sensations (counting food in the delicatessen as part of it), especially as there are neon signs, traffic lights and video screens busily calling for our attention. At the other extreme a desert, grassland plain, snowscape or open ocean will have far fewer, although still contain a multiplicity of constantly-changing sources. In every environment the addition of people and their activities will add more sources according to their number and actions.

Tourists depend on their senses and any loss or damage caused to them require appropriate special assistance. Tourist managers always attempt to maintain better standards within their areas to give the best impression. The best managers understand the full range of senses that will be in play and how to get the best advantage from every one of them.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Some definitions

Simple – but crucial. There are three ways in which ‘tourism’ and ‘education’ are related.

‘Tourism education’ means – education for working in the tourism industries. This could mean hotels, tour operators, transport undertakings, government of different levels etc.

‘Educational tourism’ means – the use of excursions and touring by schools, colleges, universities and adult education groups.

‘Tourism as education’ means – the many ways by which tourists gain experience and knowledge of all kinds from the activities of travelling .... the sights and sounds, the touching, smelling and tasting, through the landscapes and peoples that they encounter ... by deliberate efforts or sheer chance.

-oOo-

The Useful Books (actually entitled 'Bibliography') page is being updated. Meanwhile it lists over 600 books on various tourism-related subjects and more will be added. It doesn't aim to be comprehensive in general tourism topics. You won't find much here on tourism marketing since almost all the books on that area fall miserably short of adequate coverage. Its main aim is to try to support aspects of the Tourism as Education themes on these pages.

.

Click here to go straight to the Useful Books / Bibliography page

Tourists, destinations and knowledge: Click here to read the full set of innovative Jigsaw postings

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

LEEDS METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY Tourism Management Alumni News - Click here

Click here to go directly to the 'Tourism's Educational Origins' page

John Cook, James’s elder brother, was born in a tiny cottage in Marton close to the River Tees. In later years Middlesbrough would grow as an industrial port and Marton would be virtually swallowed up as one of its outer suburbs. John Cook was born to Grace and James Cook, his father being an agricultural labourer moved south from Scotland. The family transferred to a slightly larger cottage in the hamlet. It was there that James Junior, the future explorer of the Pacific, was born. The family stayed there for eight years until James Cook Senior obtained a job as a farm bailiff in Great Ayton, a few miles away.

Click here to read "A Richer Earth"

- or click here to go directly to the 'Back to Basics' page

One feature of The Hound of the Baskervilles that shows its popularity is the length to which devotees will go to make their own connections with the story. And yes, that includes tracking down bits of the real landscape of Britain that are linked to it.

Some people dress up in deerstalker hats and Victorian-style coats and smoke Meerschaum pipes. Well, they probably just suck the things, this being an antismoking age. And come to think of it they aren’t likely to inject themselves with a 7% solution of cocaine, though you never can tell for sure. They are the equivalent of geeks in Darth Vader or Dr Who outfits who meet with other consenting adults in convention centres...........

More on Hunting the Hound of the Baskervilles: Click here

Click here for brief notes About the Author

A new one-day record: 22 February 2011: 5,841 hits on this web site

Previous highest number of hits on these pages on one day: 3,613 on 14 April 2008.

Second highest: 4,384 on 30 October 2011.

Fourth highest: 17 February 2011: 3,517 hits

Since being launched on 7 January 2005 it is estimated that there have been somewhere around 3.2 million hits.

*

Hits = all requests to any pages from a distant computer
Visits = a single user looking at any number of pages and not returning for at least 30 minutes.

***

Click here for my personal Facebook page