Exploration at the Frontline
Members of the Frontline Club, the Scientific Exploration Society and all those with a wish to add value and purpose to their travels are invited to a special evening to introduce a new collaboration and to meet some of the foremost pioneering explorers of our time.
With both journalists and explorers operating in high-risk environments with the shared objectives of investigating issues and reporting findings, these two communities, represented by The Scientific Exploration Society and the Frontline Club, are launching an exciting new initiative to begin working more closely together.
The evening’s panel discussion and audience Q&A, identifies the mutual risks, priorities and opportunities for journalism and exploration. Panelists include leading lights from both communities with explorers Andrew Mitchell and Pen Hadow joined by Frontline Club founder Vaughan Smith.
In the months ahead, the initiative will bring together the two communities in a series of presentations, debates, skills workshops, and social events to enhance the safety and productivity of all parties.
Chaired by Vaughan Smith, founder of the Frontline Club, an award-winning independent cameraman and a member of the board of representatives for the Frontline Freelance Register (FFR).
The panel:
Andrew Mitchell is a rainforest explorer & advocate. He is the chairman of the Scientific Exploration Society, a forest canopy explorer, founder of the Global Canopy Programme, co-founder of Earthwatch Europe, and Personal Advisor to HRH The Prince of Wales’ Rainforest Project.
Pen Hadow is an arctic ocean explorer & advocate. He is the founder and leader of the multi-award winning Catlin Arctic Survey (2007-2013), an international research programme on the Arctic Ocean, and the associated environmental research-sponsorship agency, Geo Mission. A decade on, Hadow remains the only person to have reached the North Geographic Pole, solo and without resupply, from Canada.
Ryan Burke is the SES Explorer 2014. Canadian born Burke is a 2nd year DPhil Candidate at Oxford, who is carrying out a detailed study of the Gelada monkey in the Ethiopian highlands to establish their potential role as a keystone species in the Afroalpine ecosystem. He will tell us about the challenges and benefits of using drones to capture and classify imagery of this stunning ecosystem, and will show some of his fantastic images, a sneak preview of which can be seen at http://ryanjburke.ca/.
Oliver Steeds is an investigative journalist and adventurer. He’s reported for Channel 4 (Dispatches, Unreported World, News), ABC (Nightline), NBC (Today), Al Jazeera (People & Power, Witness, Earthrise). He has led numerous expeditions, hosting 4 series for the Discovery Channels worldwide and the Travel Channel in the US. Steeds is also a director of the educational social enterprise – Digital Explorer – that brings the front lines of journalism and exploration to the classrooms of the world.
