"Managed by her nine-year-old niece." - Bryony Kimmings "We should create and imagine and lie. It's good for us." - Jane Pollard "Being creative is sometimes about connecting the dots and taking two things and combining them." - Kyle Bean "What file formats want..." - Kenyatta Cheese "'Unfortunately the Arts Council is interested in something Miss Littlewood isn't. … Continue reading Some things I wrote down today
For the past four years a story has accreted on this blog. It's a meta-narrative, a story about stories. Looking back, I believe the arc began with the partial collapse of Leeds' Temple Works. That's what led me to encounter the people who made this city, and then to talk about them in pixels, in … Continue reading How’s it going to end?
I was honoured to be asked to do a short talk on the opening afternoon of the brilliant Culture Hack North event in Leeds this weekend. For one thing, it was a chance to appear alongside Rachel Coldicutt's dream team of Rohan Gunatillake, Natasha Carolan, Lucy Bannister, Helen Harrop, Frankie Roberto and Greg Povey. Also, … Continue reading Down with Façadism: a provocation for Culture Hack North
So my two best things ever of the past fortnight are Punchdrunk's Doctor Who adventure the Crash of the Elysium and SVK, a comic from Warren Ellis, Matt "D'Israeli" Brooker and BERG. The former is a live performance for six to 12-year-olds, so if you're a grown-up you may have to borrow a child to … Continue reading A fanboy with a strange device
The Economist (and it could only be the Economist) blog makes an astonishing attempt at quantification with the following chart, titled "When history was made": The underlying equation is this: SOME people recite history from above, recording the grand deeds of great men. Others tell history from below, arguing that one person's life is just … Continue reading History and the copy machine: the economist’s price of everything
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
Cornelia Parker got the army to blow up a shed full of stuff and then hung the shards from an art gallery ceiling. It felt like a metaphor for almost all the talks at Matt Locke's brilliant event, The Story: everywhere narratives are fragmenting, and no one seems certain how to put them back together. … Continue reading Small pieces loosely joined: on the way home from the Story
So, narrative capital. The social scientist has it like this... ... the power [research participants] have to tell the stories of their lives. This ‘narrative capital’ is then located in the ‘field’ of social science research and Sen’s capability approach is introduced to prompt the question: What real opportunities do research participants have to tell … Continue reading Who wants to be a story millionaire? Some thoughts on the value of Patient Opinion
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
Matt Edgar writes here 