Discover Britain in 100 Seconds

Former National Geographic Emerging Explorer Daniel Raven-Ellison has teamed up with Friends of the Earth for an informative short film

By Stuart Brumfitt
Published 13 Sept 2018, 09:51 BST

Despite having travelled extensively across the UK, Guerrilla Geographer & Creative Explorer Daniel Raven-Ellison still didn’t feel like he had the lay of the land. “A couple of years ago I realised that I don't know what our country looks like - not really. The country is just too big and complicated.” So he decided to travel the length of Britain, hitting 50 locations over the course of the week, and made a film about it, in collaboration with aerial cinematographer Jack Smith and Friends of the Earth.

It’s just 100 seconds long (each second of this short film = 1% of what the UK looks like from the air), but is provocative and disruptive and will give viewers a greater sense of how much of the UK is woodland, peatbog or dense city.

“A recent Ipsos MORI poll found that on average, people think that nearly half of the UK is urban,” Raven-Ellison explains. “In reality, just six percent of the UK is built on. Our society's distorted geographical imaginations results in twisted decision making: decisions on if we have room for refugees, if we can make more space for nature and the kinds of relationships we want to have with each other and the land we live on.”

The screening in London’s Leicester Square will be followed by short talks with author and economist Andrew Simms, nature-based psychotherapist Beth Collier, geographer Alasdair Rae and more. As well as discussing the future of the UK and its landscape, they’ll be inviting the audience to ask, "What if we made more space for nature?"

The UK in 100 Seconds: What if we made more space for nature? Is on at the Prince Charles Cinema, off Leicester Square on Monday 24th September, 6.45pm. Buy tickets here.

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