{"id":6388,"date":"2015-07-14T06:51:24","date_gmt":"2015-07-14T06:51:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6388"},"modified":"2015-07-14T06:51:24","modified_gmt":"2015-07-14T06:51:24","slug":"the-best-bit-of-near-n-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2015\/07\/14\/the-best-bit-of-near-n-far\/","title":{"rendered":"The best bit of near 'n' far"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For me, the best bit of the Far 'n' Near conference was the presentation by Matt Stevenson on\u00a0<em>Attention Restoration <a href=\"http:\/\/www-personal.umich.edu\/~rdeyoung\/publications\/art.html\">Theory<\/a>.<\/em> \u00a0This was an afternoon session on methodology, and\u00a0the three other talks were all almost as good.<\/p>\n<p>I enjoyed the talks because of the more informal atmosphere and because we could\u00a0'engage' with the presenters \u2013 despite the best attempts of Natural England's moderator \/ chair to limit this to a conventional <em>question : response<\/em> format. \u00a0Matt's talk was about theory, and he had data, so we were doubly blessed.<\/p>\n<p>But he did leave some things unexamined. \u00a0The phrase \"engage with nature\", for example. \u00a0I have no idea what anyone means when they say this (and it gets used a lot by outdoor learning types). \u00a0I asked what \"engage\" meant and this resulted in some revealing exchanges (despite the best efforts of the moderator).<\/p>\n<p>There is an \"engagement spectrum\" it seems. \u00a0At one end there is gazing\u00a0at a picture of \"nature\" (which is itself therapeutic, it seems); at the other, there is what someone called a \"full body experience\". \u00a0This obviously\u00a0means more than just\u00a0being outside, and implies doing something \u2013 though what, wasn't clear. \u00a0I felt a strong need for a typology.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For me, the best bit of the Far 'n' Near conference was the presentation by Matt Stevenson on\u00a0Attention Restoration Theory. \u00a0This was an afternoon session on methodology, and\u00a0the three other talks were all almost as good. I enjoyed the talks...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-talks-and-presentations"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6388\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}