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Contribution short abstract:

Elemental Tours is a walking tour company that shares materially grounded environmental histories of Manchester. In addition to guiding people through their urban environment we are creating a hybrid commons to cultivate environmental humanists and inspire tour participants to environmental action.

Contribution long abstract:

Elemental Tours shares materially grounded environmental history walking tours with participants in Manchester, UK. We are also carrying forward those experiences into a shared digital space. In this roundtable we will discuss how the concrete urban environment can be used to anchor an abstract intellectual space, how a historian can guide public participants through both simultaneously, and how we can unite a physical and digital commons to empower the public to engage with the environmental humanities.

Elemental Tours embraces the material turn in environmental history. In addition to telling stories about the people of Manchester’s past, we introduce our participants to the tangibility of the city so that it too becomes a historical subject. We also encourage them to reflect on the constructed binary between human and non-human and what this means for future interactions with their urban environment.

In the summer of 2022, we premiered a water tour and in 2023 a stone tour. Shortly, we will be adding a blog component to Elemental Tours. Our aim is to bridge the gap between a walking tour experience and continued engagement with the environmental humanities, creating a digital commons to foster the exchange of accessible information on Manchester-based environmental initiatives, work in the environmental humanities more broadly, sustainability initiatives around the globe. We are exploring how to use the online environment alongside the physical, uniting social media with the city to inspire people to think more deeply about their urban environment and take action.