RGS EXPLORE 2025: Watch "Impact Planning" Talk

Cameron Mackay speaking on the main stage at EXPLORE 2025 (Credit: Royal Geographical Society)

Thank you so much to Shane and Tom from the Royal Geographical Society for having me along to share insights in how embedding projects within community co-creation can make expeditions, fieldwork and documentary filmmaking more impactful at the 49th edition of EXPLORE: The Expeditions and Fieldwork Planning Weekend.

Watch the full talk here

Photo Credit: Spike Reid

Based on the conversation that came out of the main presentation "Purpose With Travel: Impact Planning for Expeditions", along with two panels on ethical travel and expedition filmmaking, three key messages came out of the weekend:

1. The importance of role models in the outdoors: The British Exploring Society's consultation "Sustainability and Inclusion in the Outdoors", suggests that empowering expedition team members to take their stories of the expedition back to their own communities can be a fantastic way to make the outdoors more welcoming and inclusive. From Emily Penn's eXXpedition to Suresh Paul and Dwayne Field's "Inclusive Fieldwork" seminar, there were many voices at EXPLORE sharing stories of how the role models that come out of their projects can inspire essential changes in the outdoor industry to break down the barriers many people face to achieving equal access to the outdoors.

2. Value of LGBTQIA+ voices in the outdoor community: A few folks mentioned that discussions around the work of drag queen and queer environmentalist Pattie Gonai were the first time they had seen the queer community represented at fieldwork and expedition events. Whilst this is crucial for equal representation, the queer community also has so many unique and valuable ideas to offer when it comes to seeking ways to connect with the land and form climate solutions.

3. Co-creation with communities: A valuable message that came through in lots of conversations was how essential it is to achieve true co-creation with the communities we engage with on expeditions, wherever they are in the world. The field of Participatory Action Research states that people living with social/environmental issues in their place/community have experiential knowledge of the systems that cause them and deserve to lead activism and initiatives to change them. The question is, how do we achieve this co-creation in our own expedition work?

4. The importance of our geographical "patches": Nigel Winser has a wonderful term, the "geographical path" which draws our attention to the land we inhabit ourselves. How do we connect to our own "patches" and advocate for them? Nearly every conversation over the weekend connected this term to the value of understanding our own areas, as well as the places we visit on expeditions, and seeing ourselves as hosts of expeditions that visit us as well as travelling away from home for our projects.

Explore Impact Planning Resources