Daniel Raven-Ellison

Activist, Change agent, Concerned citizen, Educator/Teacher, Explorer, Idea generator, Parent, Social entrepreneur, Technologist, Writer/Editor

Daniel Raven-Ellison is a guerrilla geographer and National Geographic Emerging Explorer who inspires new kinds of exploration. Founder of The Geography Collective and Director of Explorer HQ, his work is focussed on challenging people to explore and think about the world in new ways. In the process he is hoping for nothing less than a revolution in how we think about and through geography. In one of his projects Daniel walks across entire cities to change how we see them. Inspired by media bias and unimaginative guidebooks, his Urban Earth project attempts represent cities by exploring routes that reflect social, economic and environmental patterns. Daniel describes the explorations as conversations with the city in which he develops a sense of the local while reflecting on its relationships with the distant and global. Among others he has walked across Mexico City, Mumbai and London. His films and photography have been seen in schools, Dance East at Glastonbury Festival and are featured in the Harvard GSD book, Ecological Urbanism. A teacher by training, Daniel has led a wide range of radical education projects. These have included traveling to the small island nation of Sao Tome & Principe in the Gulf of Guinea to investigate the perceived effects of the oil industry on each of its 7 local districts for the BBC, guerrilla interventions to demonstrate the size of ecological footprints and videos questioning levels of happiness in Europe. Daniel believes that we are all explorers, constantly asking questions and searching for answers. Preoccupied with exploring the everyday, much of his work focusses on finding ways to rethink the (un)familiar and question (extra)ordinary. Daniel has been the driving force behind Mission:Explore, a global project that helps hundreds of thousands of children explore, play and learn in their local areas. He lives with his wife and son in West London.

Learning and discovery through exploration.

Activism, Alternative & Creative Exploration, Cities, Education, Teaching & Learning, Geography, Guerrilla Geography, Making things, Online & Social Media, play, Representation of Place