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SUBJECT:
Exploring and travelling
We like to think of travel as a good thing: 'to travel is to live', 'travel broadens the mind' and 'to travel is to see' are all popular sayings. Thanks to technology, we can now travel quickly and cheaply all over the world. But travel also has its dark side: the impact on indigenous communities, the effect on local cultures and the pollution it brings in its wake. Explorers can be heroic, but they can also ruthlessly exploit the regions they find, even kidnapping its inhabitants. The history of exploration is well represented in the Science Museum’s collections, with artefacts from several Everest expeditions. At the NMPFT there are many photographs of explorers and the people they met during their travels. Explorers have opened up new parts of the world, but usually with the aim of asserting their cultural superiority and taking control of natural resources. Do our holidays broaden our minds, or do we take our prejudices with us? On our return we like to reconstruct the pleasure by looking at postcards, photographs and videos. It is possible to experience foreign places without even going abroad.
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Throughout history the societies that have grown and prospered have often been those that were willing and able to explore – and often exploit – other lands, people and resources. > more
Is your journey really necessary? Why not travel in the realms of memory and imagination? Can we experience foreign lands without leaving home? Technology enables us to travel without a passport. > more
Building and running the railways required huge numbers of people, who formed themselves into tight-knit communities, forging new identities that gave meaning not just to their own lives, but to those of their families as well. This topic examines the lives of the engineers who designed the railways, the navvies who built them, the men and women who worked on them, and the ‘railway towns’ they made. > more
Combining the modern and the nostalgic, railways have a special romance today. For hundreds of years they have also attracted artists. The heroic scale of railway construction and speed, romantic destinations and industrially transformed landscapes have all provided inspiration. > more
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Going abroad has always been popular. Grand Tours, school cruises, package tours and gap years have been developed over the years to meet this demand. We hope to broaden our minds, but are we also helping to destroy the planet? > more
Can countries keep their traditional identities, or are they fated to be homogenised by globalisation? Despite external pressures, some nations, such as Japan, have succeeded in retaining their culture > more
The Flying Scotsman is probably the most famous train in the world. Its legend emerged from the Victorian era and was established during the heyday of steam, and continues to this day. > more
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Over the horizon |
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