We’re staying up in the hills, at Funca El Tornero, where tranquil fields lay heavy with the fruits of the land. Ranges of hills stretch out far in the horizon, like ripped paper in silhouette layers. A disc of turquoise punctuates the vista, a vast gleaming lake, one of the region’s rare sources of water. Twisted olive trees burn in the sun. Sweet chestnut pom poms bob in the wind. Clusters of cork oak hover on the land. And through the leaves of them all is a rustling breeze, struggling to get comfortable.

Walking along flinty mule tracks lined by dry stone walls and dryer tufts of grass, I feel the sun graze my arms. The cool, inky dark morning speckled by stars, has broken into a blistering day and a clear blue sky glistens down on the terraces below. The clip clop of hooves grows louder as a cloud of dust billows up. The brown and white pony bobs rhythmically as he carries his owner proudly through the rising path. Clusters of blackberries on burnt twigs tempt little dark haired girls with their baskets. The tell tale dribble of ‘one for the basket and one for me’ runs down their cheeks.

In the distance I hear the gentle tang of a cow bell, and closer the lazy deep baa of a sheep’s conversation. A diamond of black birds flies across the cloudless sky towards the Castillo, and Arab castle casting a comfortable shadow on the town it protects below.

Down in the valley I stumble into the town of Aracena and make my way with a Bambiesque walk into its steep cobbled streets. The air here is as relaxed as the bucolic fields that surround it, even as the happy hum of life goes on.

Women walk briskly carrying loaves of bread from the panaderia. Men climb hot ladders to paint glittering white buildings even whiter. Young girls hang out the washing on the black twisted iron balconies. Old ladies shuffle on their daily pilgrimage to Iglesia Prior de Nuestra Señora del Mayor Dolor en Aracena, the thirteenth century church that still bears the minaret of the mosque that preceded it. Couples sit on benches under shady trees whilst their children laugh climbing marble walls. Teenagers do what they do everywhere – hang out.

I find a table at one of the bars surrounding Plazes Marques. People are scattered along the pavement in anticipation of the evening break when the air will hang heavy with the scent of coffee and the aroma of sherry. The gentle babble of Spanish builds up around me aas friends devour small plates of pan, queso and jamon. Men finding their pigs. They know more about the acorn fed pigs that their dinner comes from than the Museo del Jamon can ever teach. In the centre of the square stands a fountain that never stops running, the water sourced from a nearby spring. It’s slower these days, with Spain suffering severe drought, but there’s a symbolic trickle from the spout. In the bar the wine never stops flowing, itself sourced from the slopes that surround us.

I sit back and sip a glass. I smell the hints of pear and taste the soft peach. I’m content to stop walking, just sit for a short while. Down here, in little Aracena, I no longer feel so lost.

—

I was in Aracena on the Dark Angels advanced course.

World news comes by way of Guardian star-journo Matthew D’Acona in conversation with legendary columnist & author David Aaronovitch. Comedians Shappi Khorsandi and Geoff Norcott tackle UK News. Sofar Sounds take on the Culture section with a selection of some of the finest unplugged acts. The science & technology section sees philosopher-scientist extraordinaire and co-writer of Ex Machina & World War Z Adam Rutherford. A panel of remarkable female adventurers including Anna McNuff, Lois Pryce and Pip Stewart take on the travel section. And popular science writer Marcus Chown hosts a walk – taking you to the edge of the solar system via the top of Primrose Hill. And as no Sunday is complete without a roast dinner and lashings of red wine, big cosy arm chairs and a roaring fire, and conversations with like minded people, there will be plenty of that on offer too.

Sunday Papers Live came out of a conversation in 2012 between two festival producers Ben DeVere & Joshua Greene. The guys organise festivals, which take a long time to build, but ‘you only see the fruits in the summer.’ The idea was to create something a bit cosier for the downtime. Ben also loved how ‘our festival discussion tents have such a particular atmosphere of possibility and informality, and I was curious if we could replicate that in a city. I reckon we pulled it off.’

People get less and less of their news from newspapers these days. There’s something in the gathering together of Sunday Papers Live that replicates the old familiar feeling that a newspaper offers that news feeds don’t. They  encourage people to slow down and focus on one thing at a time, and we delve into issues in depth. ‘I see the event as a part of the growing Slow Movement.’ says Ben. ‘We’re an anti-browse gig.’

I asked Ben who his favourite participant has been. ‘That’s impossible after nearly 4 years of amazing people… Jon Snow was brilliant. Eddie The Eagle had some incredible stories. For our very first event we had the world’s most prolific streaker reminisce about streaking the Superbowl and the Olympics. He was brilliant.’

The creators of FloVibe – Jason Pooley (The House of Yoga) and collaborator Lou Wellby of Jam Sandwich Live – have brought together all the things they love in one place, for a weekend of what they term ‘soul-nourishment.’

Starting from their five values of community, empowerment, connection, play and celebration, they’ve manifested them in a sparkling event that will take place on 2-4th June 2017 at the idyllic Kelmarsh Hall in Northamptonshire.

There’s yoga masterclasses, dance and movement workshops, inspiring talks, storytelling, live music spanning folk, jazz, roots & reggae (including Cristobal & The Sea), incredible DJs, nutritious, delicious wholesome food and treatments in the woods. Rather than exhausting you, this is a weekend of revelry that aims to inspire and restore.

Tickets start at only £75 for the day, and are available here, with weekend and camping options available.

Commissioned by The Architecture Centre as part of their ‘Our Place’ programme, Sounding City involved travelling around the area throughout 2016, and asking people for their thoughts, feelings and experiences about where they live. Artists were then asked to respond to these community sentiments through music, an audio transcription of their home and habitats. The result was a ninety minute long LP where 600 stories were turned into twelve songs that, as the Architecture Centre explain, are ‘ as a tuning fork – taking the measure of place through musical interpretation, and that the songs produced are a diffraction or a kind of reverb resonating like ripples across the city.’

Jennie’s work is grounded in the theory of cartography and psychogeography, but is site specific, and artistic. This blurring of creativity, physical place and intellectual ideas work is fundamental to ‘re-inscribing a place with its own narrative….allowing us to experience its complexity and the value of our story in it.’

Throughout the music we hear conversation and activity, clashes and extremities alongside the harmonies. The songs are communication in themselves, expressing the less tangible nature of a place that we forget about, those far beyond its physicality. Atmosphere, culture, belief, social networks, freedom, routine – all play a part in the identity of a place.

For Jenny ‘this is political. As cities have increasingly become places you visit rather than a part of, this is a way for people to take ownership of their townscape. Through this work I would like to state that cities are for people and should be spaces we are the co-creators of…where we can think about what architecture and town planning does and look at its end point – which is individual experience, collective narrative and shared stories. To explore the idea that cities are not simply  buildings, they are what happens between people around buildings and on the streets.’

Our location is not a passive player in our lives, and just as we affect our environment, it impacts us. It’s this that makes a place become like home, or attached to particular memories. Sometimes we don’t see a place, instead relying on past knowledge to create a picture in our minds.

Jenny explains that ‘As we walk through an environment we develop an intimate knowledge of it which is at once the interpretation of what we see and, as our familiarity increases, this becomes entwined with our own store of memories and experiences. In this sense we digest the built environment and it becomes a language for us which is like a two – way mirror. Our landscape tells us who we are and what our place is within it, how we interpret this is extremely nuanced.’

There’s a vast variation in the genres, styles and subjects. Gill Simmons & Paul Lawless song about Georgian Waitrose is humorous, Alexandra Hamilton Ayres created a more abstract response to the line Tower Blocks and Terraces, and Joe Walker and Lewis Toghill made a beautiful piece which drew on a field recording they made with a busker.

Although the tracklisting does not follow any route, it would be fascinating to use the record as a guide to the city, and explore it as you walk it. If nothing else it’s an inspiration to pay attention to the world around you – your world.

For more on Bristol’s Architecture Centre and its community work, visit here.