‘Climates of Change’

The 6th International Adventure Conference

‘Climates of Change: Rethinking the Outdoor Experience’

30 January – 2 February 2018, Segovia, Spain

Please visit https://www.adventureconference18.com for more info!

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A variety of atmospheres, conditions and climates enable and constrain our activities outdoors.  Our sixth International Adventure Conference will open up critical discourse about changing climates – economic, social, cultural, philosophical and physical.  Our previous events in Scotland, Norway, England and Ireland have attracted a truly worldwide audience - from a range of different climates - with participants from 30+ countries in attendance over the years.  The delegates carry with them lived experiences of these climates and share stories of the ways in which their business or practice has adapted to climates of economic difficulty, global warming, heightened political security concerns and imbalances in terms of policy, access and power relations.

We aim to bring together leading academics and industry practitioners in the fabulous setting and wide-ranging climates of Segovia, to learn about and debate burning issues in nature-based and adventure tourism, outdoor recreation and outdoor learning.  Themes range from marketing and entrepreneurship responses to shifting climates to philosophical issues concerned with these changing, fluid conditions… all themes related to something close to our hearts: life in the great outdoors.  Of course, themes such as journeys, liminality, boundary crossing and escape attempts from home are also core and related concepts, but for 2018 should be set against the conceptual apparatus of ‘climate’, variously conceived.

As explored in Ireland, people change during journeys ... but nature, including human nature and society, also adapts as climates change.  The concept of climates can be applied practically in the marketplace.  Tourism, education, business and social sciences point towards the need for vigorous critical debate on late-/post-modernity and its discontents, on climates of capitalism and its winners and losers, and on the beneficiaries of liquid modernity alongside the ‘precariat’, for whom change simply ensures extended periods of uncertainty and enslavement.

How does this impact on our engagement with ‘the great outdoors’?  What can the role of adventure tourism and outdoor education play in addressing these seas of change?  What does ‘the great outdoors’ mean for these different peoples living under shifting climates?  The constant conference themes of time, nature and being, set against these concerns, may make us consider the accessibility of adventure for all, and the adaptability of outdoor experiences to meet the needs of new communities, migrant populations, and changing landscapes.

We look forward to welcoming you to the 2018 conference, to taste some of the world’s best cuisine, breathe the fresh mountain air and feel the peace of the forest, as well as exploring the vibrant city of Segovia – one of the oldest and most spectacular in all Spain. Vamos!