Sociology Activities for Schools and Colleges

Date: on request

Suitable for year 12 and 13 and equivalent students

This workshop uses three examples of everyday life to show how we can ‘make familiar things strange’ through sociological analysis. Looking at traffic lights, self-checkouts, and shopping centre escalators, we can ask questions about the design and functions of our shared society. This allows us to examine the relations of power that led to the everyday world looking and operating the way that it does, and to consider the ways that ‘material society’ shapes and influences our lives in ways we often don’t notice. This workshop links to the content of WJEC GCE AS/A Level Sociology Unit 1 and Unit 3.

>> Book a Workshop

Date: on request

Suitable for year 12 and 13 and equivalent students

What do you do ‘for luck’? Maybe the answer is ‘nothing’ but there’s a chance that you might have a personal lucky charm, or you touch something wooden or salute lone magpies, either to bring some luck or to avoid misfortune. Tibetan culture has a highly sophisticated astrology system, part of which focuses on managing what might be called ‘luck’. Using this as a case study, this talk and workshop looks at how we rationalise good and bad luck, and the techniques we use to beat perceived misfortune. Themes in the Sociology syllabus include inequality, health and illness, identity, and religion. 

>> Book a Workshop

Date: on request

Suitable for year 12 and 13 and equivalent students

The individual actions you did this morning getting to school (think about what how you got up, what you did immediately after, what you chose to wear, eat, how you got here, and why you came here in the first place etc). Then discuss the extent to which you think these actions were (a) shaped by learned ‘social norms’ and ‘social values’ (i.e. behaviour we do because most other people in our society or culture do them), or were (b) our genuine free choices that we as individuals were able to make, free from these ‘social norms’ and ‘social values’?

>> Book a Workshop

Date: on request

Suitable for year 12 and 13 and equivalent students

This illustrated talk, suitable for students in a wide range of subjects - including Film and Media, History and Sociology - will investigate the way in which our experience of cinema has developed from the very intimate and personal 'peephole viewing' of Edison's kinetoscope to the truly social, immersive expereicnes we recognise today. We'll take in the lavish 1000+ seater auditorium or 'dream palace', the 'drive-in' popular with American youths, the bespoke movie theatre and the multiplex. And we'll consider whether the increasingly popular 'pop up' cinema, site specific screenings and the 'open cinema' movement (aimed at extending exhibition to excluded communities) is the future of independent cinema exhibition in the UK.

>> Book a Workshop

Date: on request

Suitable for year 12 and 13 and equivalent students

This workshop will take the topic of the Brexit vote of 2016 as its starting point to discuss how versions of Britishness and/or Welshness are contstructed/disseminated through cinema. Central to this debate will be the modes of heritage cinema and social realism. Students will be encouraged to reflect on films such as The King's speech (2010), The Viceroy's House (2017), This is England (2006), Pride (2015) and Patagonia (2010). 

>> Book a Workshop