On Saturday 6th October I entered two notable Turku buildings that I had never entered before. One was the Messukeskus or Exhibition Centre in Artukainen west of the centre. This was for the Turku Book Fair and a highlight was almost literally rubbing shoulders with President Sauli Niinistö who marched right past me wearing a literary-looking tweed jacket.
But before that I spoke at the Virastustalo building in the centre on the south/east side of the river, next to the Finnish theatre. The audience was a fairly large one of high-school English teachers. I applied my research on St Louis to pedagogy: how, in the classroom, would we use this sort of material and the sort of approach I have developed in publications as Deep Locational Criticism? The possibilities to use a city for genuinely multidisciplinary, multimedial and participatory activities seemed to come across well, based on the feedback I have received so far. Here are the materials for the day, and a few images from my second visit to St Louis in April of this year
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