There has been an increasing focus on "Gross National Happiness" over the last few years and Bhutan, a small Kingdom situated in the Himalayas, North of India and South of China, already puts Happiness at the heart of its government policy, seeing 'Gross National Happiness' as crucial in its development process. Recent research by Adrian White of the University of Leicester has shown that the main factors affecting people's happiness are health provision, wealth and education and based on this research, the first ever "World Map of Happiness" has been produced by the University of Leicester. With reference to White's research, a BBC article published in July 2006 named Denmark as the 'happiest place on the earth' (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/5224306.stm).

The Geography of Happiness is a project involving 11 UK Geography teachers which was funded by the Geographical Association (GA) and a Royal Geographical Society (RGS-IBG) Innovative Teaching Grant. The project itself was the original concept of Dan Raven-Ellison (Head of Geography and consultant for BBC Education) and was conceived following a meeting by a group of geographers after attending a video editing course in London back in February 2006. The aim of the project has been to explore differences in levels of happiness across Europe through visits to European capitals to interview locals with respect to their level of 'happiness' i.e. in relation to how satisfied they are with their life. The group of 12 geographers has worked as 6 pairs, visiting 6 European countries (mainly the capitals), with filming for the project taking place in Latvia, Rome, Sweden, Madrid, Amsterdam and Dublin.

Filming for the project took place during the summer holidays and on Friday 25th August, a team of 6 members of the group met at 21CC (the BBC's Digital Learning Centre in West London) to edit the videos and draw together the key findings of the project. The interviews have been edited down to draw together the responses for each of the five questions that were asked.

In order to be able to compare responses between countries, the same 5 questions were asked in each interview in each of the 6 countries.

PROJECT OUTCOMES:

The footage from the interviews has now been edited together to provide a series of videos from each of the countries visited based on people's responses to the above questions. A summary of the research, links to the videos and further resources / information can be found at the online home of the project; "The Geography of Happiness Wiki" http://geographyofhappiness.pbwiki.com/ .The Wiki will continue to be updated with resources and ideas on how to use the resources and it is hoped that the project will inspire other teachers to make their own videos using the above questions to share through the Wiki.

The Videos can be downloaded to be used on the IWB / data project etc.. and for some cases extra footage and photographs have been provided on the blog to help teachers adapt the materials to create their own resources. As well as through the wiki, all teh video can be accessed directly through the Geography of Happiness Video Blog http://geographyofhappiness.blip.tv.

ST IVO INVOLVEMENT - Geography of Happiness - Amsterdam

Rob Chambers from the St Ivo Geography Department was part of the project team and along with Sarah Hack (of Bishop Stopford's School Enfield) undertook filming in Amsterdam between July 28th and 30th 2006. During the weekend's filming in Amsterdam, 3 locals were interviewed and asked the same 5 questions. Their responses have been archived in the videos below. Having watched some of the responses of the locals in Amsterdam, why not now visit the Geography of Happiness Wiki and compare these responses with those from the other European capital visited?

Amsterdam Q1 - On a Scale of 0-10 how happy do you think your local area is? Why and how could this score be improved? VIDEO 1
Amsterdam Q2 - How happy do you think your country is ? How could this score be improved ? VIDEO 2
Amsterdam Q3 - Do you think there are some groups in your country that are happier than others ? Why ? VIDEO 3
Amsterdam Q4 - Where in the world do you think people are happiest and why ? VIDEO 4
Amsterdam Q5 - When you think of the United Kingdom what do you think of ? What is the United Kingdom like ? VIDEO 5

Geography of Happiness: AMSTERDAM VIDEO CLIPS (please be patient if watching the videos directly below rather than from the video blog - they will take around 20-30 secs to start depending on your internet speed - a dark grey progress bar shows how much has been downloaded - you may need to press play again once the progress bar is complete)

FURTHER LINKS:

Find out more about the project at Alan Parkinson's Geography Pages http://www.geographypages.co.uk/happy.htm, including an overview of the filming that took place in Alan's Dublin Blog  http://www.geographypages.co.uk/dublin.htm

World Database of Happiness http://www1.eur.nl/fsw/happiness/index.html

Gross National Happiness (Wikipedia) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_national_happiness

Bhutan's emphasis on expanding 'Gross National Happiness' http://worldandi.com/subscribers/feature_detail.asp?num=24298

Measuring GNH (Gross National Happiness) http://geography.about.com/b/a/208375.htm

Gross International Happiness Project http://www.grossinternationalhappiness.org/ 

The Case for Happiness (The Guardian) http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,3604,908202,00.html

The Science of Happiness http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/happiness_formula/4783836.stm

What about Gross National Happiness (TIME) http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1016266,00.html?cnn=yes

BBC Programme - The Happiness Formula http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/happiness_formula/

BBC Video Nation - Happiness http://www.bbc.co.uk/videonation/category/happiness/

Gross National Happiness: Improving Unsustainable Western Economic Systems http://www.iccr.org/news/press_releases/dixonspeach092304.PDF#search=%22Gross%20National%20Happiness%22

Gross National Happiness and Development http://www.grossinternationalhappiness.org/downloads/Book-GNH-I-1.pdf#search=%22Gross%20National%20Happiness%20Guardian%22

GeoBytes@StIvo was created and is maintained by St Ivo School Geography Department                ©2001-2006 R Chambers/ St Ivo School Geography Department

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