Culture Vulture Emma challenges us all to see our home town anew through the eyes of a tourist. My contribution is over on the Culture Vulture blog: A railway that runs on coal and love And if you liked that, you might also like this: Good Engines a 12-page black-and-white newspaper telling the tale of … Continue reading A railway that runs on coal and love
This is my youngest son, Pascal, when he was two years old. He's looking sheepish because he's just picked an apple. It's an apple from the orchard at Woolsthorpe Manor, Lincolnshire, the orchard where Isaac Newton first conceived of gravity. We were drawn to this beautiful, remote farmhouse for a tea break on a long … Continue reading “The bit where the screen went black and you said ‘look up'”: on the irresistible pull of a story in the place where it happened
London has Christopher Wren, Barcelona Antonio Gaudi, and Leeds, well Leeds has Cuthbert Brodrick, the Victorian architect who left us just a handful of public buildings including the amazing, elipitical Corn Exchange. So when the organisers of Bettakultcha, the most fun you'll ever have with Microsoft Office, secured it as the venue for their latest … Continue reading Corn and Grit: Notes from a talk at Bettakultcha VII
Tim Wright's 'Harrison Fraud', the tale of a practical joke gone too far, was a highlight for me of last year's The Story. Now he has worked with another favourite project of mine, Bookleteer, to make 'The Second Book of Urizen', a walk around London in the footsteps of William Blake. It's a booklet, not … Continue reading Blakewalking back to 1794
I transcribed this sign in preparation for a talk about the Leeds Corn Exchange at Bettakultcha VII. I love the way we can tell so much of the building's history from the list of things that were forbidden there. Like Rachel Whiteread's 'House', the art is in the negative space. The corn factors have gone, … Continue reading Corn Market Bye-laws: history in the negative
An Anecdote, related by Citizen Thelwall, at the Capel Court Society, during the discussion of a question, relative to the comparative Influence of the Love of Life, of Liberty, and of the Fair Sex, on the Actions of Mankind. You must know then, that I used, together with a variety of youthful attachments, to be … Continue reading King Chaunticlere; or, the Fate of Tyranny
Notes for my TEDxLeeds presentation, "The Makers of Leeds". The Prezi version is here. It starts with the amazing view from the top of the TEDxLeeds venue, the Mint, which looks out over Leeds on all sides. The American architect Hugh Newell Jacobsen said: "When you look at a city, it's like reading the hopes, aspirations … Continue reading The Makers of Leeds
If knowledge and enthusiasm are the raw materials of our post-industrial society then The Culture Vulture is proof of the rich seam of the stuff that runs beneath Leeds and Bradford. It's all the more amazing because it's the independent, unfunded achievement of one person, Emma Bearman, who routinely marshals a large and eclectic mix … Continue reading Bee meets bonnet: the Other Fourth Plinth
As mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I moved offices in Leeds earlier this year from Holbeck Urban Village to Clarence Dock. The stark contrast between the two areas has set me thinking about a city's built environment and how it can make a difference to people's lives. First some context for those who don't know … Continue reading You wouldn’t burn a book, or some reflections on narrative capital
On a day without a plane in the sky over Europe it seems appropriate to recall this breathtaking leap of imagination by John Ruskin, a full 50 years before the Wright brothers' first powered flight (my italicisation): "The charts of the world which have been drawn up by modern science have thrown into a narrow … Continue reading Grounded, Ruskin takes to the skies over Europe
About this time of year, this blog gets a peak in search hits for Thomas A Watson of "Mr Watson, come here. I want you" fame. Somewhere out there, I imagine, is a teacher who sets the same class assignment every year, and whose students flock obediently to Google in search of information and images. … Continue reading Thomas A Watson: An Apology
Dirty tricks among high-tech businesses? I recently came across the original Machiavellian play book for start-ups, and it's more than 200 years old. Two of my 1794 heroes were the steam pioneer James Watt and Holbeck engineer Matthew Murray. Both made engines for the textile mills of northern England - in effect the processing power to … Continue reading How to get ahead in business the Boulton and Watt way
The Ignite London challenge of telling the story of my 1794 heroes in five minutes and 20 slides set me thinking about other ways to package up a narrative in the most minimal way. In parallel with preparing my talk, I used the slides as the starting point for some printed material. My experimental recipe … Continue reading 1794: Prototyping a small story
A few weeks ago Imran Ali tweeted a modest proposal that Leeds' Temple Works needs a giant robot. As a fan of Miyazaki's Laputa, I thought this sounded quite cool. What I didn't realise until today is that Leeds already has a giant walking robot. If you're in the area for one of its rare … Continue reading Why Didn’t Anyone Tell Me There Was A Giant Walking Robot?
I've always found it strange that Eric S. Raymond chose the cathedral as his metaphor for closed development in free software, because the construction of our great medieval cathedrals must have been a very open process. Passing peasants were doubtless discouraged from picking up a chisel to hack at the nearest stone, but Gothic buildings … Continue reading Mobile Gothic: a flight of fancy
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