Journey, ‘an act of travelling from one place to another’ (OED). Some consider the use of journey to be clichéd; to be honest I am one of those people, and I usually roll my eyes when I hear it. You may also hear an audible sigh. However, the term ‘cliché’ is defined as an ‘overused phrase’ (OED), and perhaps ‘journey’ is similarly stereotyped; but maybe this is because it is a very appropriate metaphor. Because an act of travelling can involve literal movement from one place to another; however, it could also be a metaphorical movement, as in the fluidity of learning and understanding, or what Atkinson (2011) refers to as punching into new learning spaces. Interestingly, this dual premise of journey involves the practices of the body. Therefore, as I near the destination of this particular journey, literally and metaphorically, I reflect on the what? and, so what? of this research assemblage, Placemaking: A New Materialist Theory of Pedagogy.

I have examined and explored the theoretical and methodological approaches to researching how we make and learn place, underpinned by new materialist thinking. As I have continually stated, it is through our socio-material practices, everyday making, that we know, understand, learn and ultimately make place. Whether we are walking, talking, working, making photographs or films, commuting, doing the washing up or reading, it is through these embodied ways of knowing and learning that we make place. We know and learn these bodily socio-material practices and dispositions (Bourdieu 1992; de Certeau 1984) early in our lives. It is these ways that teach members of a community, a culture or a society to relate in ways consistent with the practices of their group, place or country, and consequently to feel at ease, to have a sense of belonging. De Certeau also maintains that the repetition of these practices enables ways of overcoming alienation and can be used to forge a group and a national identity. But, as also discussed, these socio-material practices and pedagogies can also be used to exclude, where the absence of matter has power to teach and we learn disbelonging.

Place is made and learned with bodies, with the socio-material, and these embodied and material pedagogical practices make meanings that can be used in very powerful yet subtle and nuanced ways.