Re-imagining rural mythologies: interdisciplinary conference strand

Together with Elaine Speight (University of Central Lancashire), Rebecca Chesney (independent artist, associated with UCLan) & Dr Rosemary Shirley (Manchester Metropolitan University) I co-convened an interdisciplinary conference strand. It brought together 12 academics/artists from UK, USA, Denmark, Greece, Sweden, Turkey who all shared an interest in ‘the rural’. The papers, presentations of artworks, short films, performances and readings, challenged preconceptions about the contemporary countryside by engaging with the complexities and contradictions of specific rural places. In particular, we sought to examine how imagination and creative work, as a means of exploration and documentation, could produce new forms of geographical knowledge, which promote more complex and generative interpretations of rural environments. We were interested to discern how, and through which processes, rural mythologies are perpetuated. How might binary perceptions of ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ serve particular cultural, economic and political agendas, and what role does imagination play within social constructions of the countryside? Keywords: rural; imagination; mythology