Conference to explore creativity

Each year, the Chair of the Society’s Annual International Conference chooses the conference theme. This year, Professor Patricia Noxolo (University of Birmingham) has chosen Geographies of creativity/creative geographies and hopes the conference will explore creativity and creative practices in all its varied forms.

Pat sees geography as a creative discipline, “I think that over time [as geographers] we have used the word creativity more. I think it's one of those areas that perhaps at a certain point we didn't see as something that was geographical”.  

Pat suggests that geographers’ capacity for critical thinking means they are inherently creative: “I've been thinking about unexpected connections, and I think you have to be quite creative in order to see those. Creativity is partly about thinking outside the box. If that box is the map, which puts a border around a particular location and says this is a separate location, I think a lot of what human geographers do is say, well, actually, what's happening outside that box, what's the connection between this place and that place? So, while geographers can be creative through making maps, murals and art, creativity is also present in less overtly creative strands of the discipline such as geopolitics and development geographies.”  

For Pat, grappling with the theme of creativity also involves thinking about how being the first Black woman in the role of conference Chair offers opportunities to be creative: “I feel like it gives a certain amount of freedom because who knows what to expect, you know, all bets are off in a certain way…I'm trying to rethink what the Chair's role can be in relation to the conference so that we have lots of creative opportunities as part of it.”   

Pat hopes to include a bottom-up element to the conference programme, involving the local community in Birmingham through film screenings, performances and archive tours, while also acknowledging that this relies on the delegates taking up the opportunity to extend the conference beyond the university’s walls. “I'm hoping that the delegates will be excited by the theme and that they'll want to get involved and free themselves up to take a few risks and try something new. This is the conference where people will hopefully feel it's not just them that's taking a risk. My hope is that they'll get in touch and say, I'm thinking of doing this - it's a bit risky, it's a little bit off the wall, and I'm not quite sure how to make it happen. We can work out a way of making it happen together - I think a lot of creative ideas are in people's heads, but they just convince themselves they can't do it”.

The conference will take place at the University of Birmingham, and online, from Tuesday 26 August to Friday 29 August 2025. The deadline for submissions for the conference programme (organised sessions, papers and posters) is Friday 7 March 2025. Guidance is available for prospective session organisers and presenters and we encourage you to consider the kinds of spaces and conversations you want to curate and how to best engage attendees in-person and online.

If you have any questions, please email ac2025@rgs.org.