In the early 1980s I worked for a couple of years as a Community Artist. I was part of a team of artists from different disciplines. We worked with a diverse range of people from 8 to 80 years old, most of them with some sort of special need. Sometimes we worked on our own, … Read more
A month passes. Two weeks in Canada – Vancouver and the Rockies (the photo is of Lake Louise). Hosting a conference – “Let’s Talk Research 4: Building Community”. Developing a new team-to-team approach called “Looking for the Common Ground”. Hosting a weekend of buddhist teachings with Venerable Mary Reavey looking at “Own your own death”. … Read more
Imagine the scenario, you’ve seen that I have published a book “Values Count”. You realised that it came out back in February of this year. You would love to read it – but you don’t want to buy it in paperback. Either you live outside the UK or you just love reading books in digital … Read more
Why do I love abstract and weird? Well… to be honest, why not? Sometimes it’s so important for the music we listen to or the things that we read to challenge us. If all we listen to is the sweet and obvious sounds then we miss a whole sound palette. Being open to adventures in … Read more
Back in 2004 I wrote a booklet of poems called “the alice conversations“. 13 poems in a short booklet, it was a set of dialogues and conversations with Alice. When I first began working with Carl Jung’s theories of archetypes and active imagination, I developed a set of characters that would reappear frequently in my … Read more
Short post this one. Feeling like having a quick rant today! Am I in a minority for thinking that learning should be an end in itself and not the means to something else? I am thinking in particular of the distinction between vocational education and non-vocational education. My first degree was probably as close to … Read more
I have mentioned before on this blog that I am a huge fan of the work of David Sylvian and Richard Skelton. An initial google might lead you to think that these two have very little in common. Sylvian began his career in the last 70s and early 80s with Japan, a band that trod … Read more
For the past few months I have been writing the first draft of my next book. It’s called “The Journey to Wonder”. It’s about the people who have been a huge influence on my life, on how I think, how I work and what I produce. Here is the chapter about Neil Young: The wild … Read more
Reading books, magazines, articles and blog posts across a truly diverse range of topics is a huge help to stimulate novel ideas. This is, I think, the heart of a creative approach. To be stimulated to generate new ideas, we need to draw from a wide range of influences. To achieve this, we should always … Read more
In the last post I mentioned that I worked as a Community Artist in the 1980s. This involved teachings skills in photography as well as creative writing. It must be said that my photographic skills were pretty basic. This was in the days of rolls of film, black and white moody photos and dark rooms … Read more