Thursday, January 17, 2013

2013...

...after the new year celebrations settled...

....the year has started well with a trip to Derry for the MECCSA conference, where my colleague Neill Patton and I gave a brief overview of some of the issues and debates coming out of the two Scotland-based projects in Remaking Society. More about that another time, but here's the presentation.



Whilst there we visited the Museum of Free Derry, which is a visceral memorial to the struggles of the last 40 years of the Bogside community. Very powerful. Hoping to go back this year for some more of the City of Culture events - the Void Gallery has a really strong programme, but there's lots of good stuff happening. 





In the meantime, here's a good article from the Hindustan Times about Reversing the Gaze, the project that our UWS doctoral student Ben Parry has initiated, working with the Acorn Foundation and sundry others in Dharavi. 




It's shaping up to be a very busy year...and hopefully a little pivotal, as the wheels fall off the scrappy carts peddled by the shameful austerity merchants in the UK government and the Scottish independence debate hots up. Much happening, at home, abroad, at work; feels quite interesting.

Also - a quick plug for The Eskdalemuir Harmonium - the first in a series of coloured vinyl albums being made by my excellent PhD student Chris Dooks, and just released by Toronto-based Komino Records