This course features talks from leading journalists, academics and editors on how to find and uncover urban stories, anywhere in the world. You’ll learn how to explore, contextualise and document cities, as well as how to pitch your story ideas to editors.
Course content
- Guardian columnist Aditya Chakrabortty, whose work has been shortlisted for this year’s Orwell Prize, reveals how he approaches writing about urban and housing issues
- Guardian Cities editor Mike Herd advises how to spot stories in your everyday environment and shape a story for a mainstream audience
- Ground Control author Anna Minton will teach you how to write critically about architecture, urbanisation and the global economy
- Urban explorer Bradley L. Garrett, author of Explore Everything: Place-Hacking the City, gives advice on urban exploring, ethnographic research and multimedia projects
This course is for you if...
- You’re a writer or journalist interested in writing stories about buildings, urban spaces and/or communities
- You’re a blogger or amateur photographer who wants to capture great urban stories and images
- You’re an academic or student in the social sciences or humanities who wants to learn how to get your ideas heard by a wider audience
Tutor profiles
Aditya Chakrabortty is the senior economics commentator at the Guardian, where he writes he writes a weekly column and reports on economic issues in Britain, Europe and around the world. His reporting on London’s housing crisis has been shortlisted for this year’s Orwell Prize for investigating social evils. Last year, he was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for journalism. Aditya was previously economics producer for the BBC, and his series of reports from China won a Harold Wincott award. In recent months, Aditya’s work for the Guardian has covered subjects including the London housing crisis; social inequality in Mumbai, and the fortunes of the London Borough of Enfield. Find Aditya on Twitter here.
Mike Herd is editor of the Guardian Cities website. He was previously assistant G1 editor. Guardian Cities was launched in 2014 to create a fresh and engaging hub for reporting and discussing urban life and the future of cities around the world. The site hosts opinion and analysis from a range of voices across the globe, along with news, graphics and data, and is supported by the Rockefeller Foundation.
Anna Minton is a writer and journalist, and the author of Ground Control: Fear and happiness in the twenty-first-century city. She is a Reader in Architecture at the University of East London where she is launching a new Masters (MRes) programme called ‘Reading the Neoliberal City’, which starts in September 2015.
Bradley L. Garrett is a social geographer at the University of Southampton with an interest in unmapped, unseen and lost places. His first book, Explore Everything: Place-Hacking the City (Verso Books 2013), is an ethnographic account of his adventures trespassing into ruins, tunnels and skyscrapers in eight different countries with urban explorers from around the world. His second book, Subterranean London: Cracking the Capital (Prestel Publications 2015), is a collaborative photo book that dissects the world underneath London’s streets. Details of his current research, media projects, publications and events can be found at www.bradleygarrett.com
Details
Date: Saturday 23 May 2015
Times: 10am-4pm
Location: The Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU
Price: £129 (includes VAT, booking fee, lunch and refreshments)
Event capacity: 100
To contact us, click here. Terms and conditions can be found here.
Returns policy
Tickets may be refunded if you contact us at least 14 days before the course start date. Please see our terms and conditions for more information on our refund policy.
