This month's essential reading

Willing Slaves: how the overwork culture is ruling our lives, by Madeleine Bunting


Babylon and Beyond: the economics of anti-capitalist, anti-globalist and radical green movements, by Derek Wall


City of Panic, by Paul Virilio

Journeys Across My City goes to Barcelona

The Buenos Aires films are being screened in Barcelona as part of the international children's television festival on November 15th. They are also being screened at the Lineout Can Film Festival in Leicester this weekend, and were recently shown again in Sydney. It's nice to see them travelling so well and so far...

More information from Redcurrent Films.

Graham is off to Barcelona again this week to plan the international exchange for the Teacher Artist Partnership programme and also to plot future developments with Journeys Across My City...

Marimekko exhibition

The Lighthouse in Glasgow is currently hosting a small but fascinating retrospective exhibition about the work of Marimekko, that superb and innovative design/fashion company that became synonymous with Finland's renaissance in the 1960s and 1970s. What Armi Ratia, who founded Marimekko, understood was that the democratic modernism which underpinned the optimistic and sunny culture of the business would benefit both producers and consumers: a kind of updated Bauhaus and William Morris sprit which aimed to democratise radical design, extending beyond clothes into the whole domestic environment. Perhaps no coincidence that 95% of their employees are still women.

The company's design culture was prophetic and pre-figurative in many ways: they rapidly moved beyond boldly printed textiles, and carefully made clothes with clean lines, into accessories, furniture, and thence into architecture and wider design. Marimekko became a total design concept but without cultishness or pretension- because it maintained an ironic, playful, eclectic sprit. The fashion philosophy was always about much more than clothes, and they never designed just for a skinny young minority. Hugely influential, hugely important, they pioneered an ethical, modernist, optimistic aesthetic that still holds promise. This book tells the story. And this article about the exhibition recently appeared in Scotland on Sunday.

airline of the moment

the future (at least until the oil runs out, and the apocalypse hits) is small aircraft...much simpler, much quicker.

if the trains ran faster then there would be no need to fly...but having spent 5 and a half hours yesterday trying to get from manchester to glasgow by train, one can see the attraction...

furniture retailer of the moment

music of the moment

autobahn, (side a of the LP only, side b is just too cheesy) by Kraftwerk - played very quietly it becomes almost ambient

Sugarcubes albums and 12inches played very loud

Kenneth Leighton's sacred choral music

The milk-eyed mender by Joanna Newsom (a favourite of our 7 year old daughter, but suitable for grown-ups too)

Mpho Skeef's new EP

books of the moment

Visions of the City, by David Pinder

Educating the Reflective Practitioner, by Donald Schon

Massive Change: a manifesto for the future design culture by Bruce Mau and the Institute without Boundaries

devouring apocalypse balloons

Two of the three concerts that Graham did as a pianist with Current 93 live in Toronto in June 2004 have now been released on the Durtro/Jnana label, as a two-CD set: How I Devoured Apocalypse Balloon. Also playing were Michael Cashmore, guitar, Simon Finn, vocals/guitar, Ben Chasny/Six Organs of Admittance, guitar, John Contreras, cello and of course David Michael - late Tibet. The recording captures the unique atmosphere of the concerts and is highly recommended as an excellent document for those familiar and less familiar with Current 93. Also just released is Judas as Black Moth , a retrospective of this highly influential group from the English underground's work.

Birmingham

Went down to Birmingham last Friday to talk to some schools for the Specialist Schools Trust: what a transformation has happened in the city centre since I was last there ten years ago! Trouble is, it's all so shiny and corporate that it looks much the same as any other regional city centre...once again the construction of urban images has driven the development of the downtown to the point where the private and public money has flooded in but there doesn't seem to be much of a vision beyond the usual retail cluster, dull business services and some fairly poor street performances to 'animate' the space. Not good enough! Sure there are the galleries, theatres, exhibition spaces etc but they recede compared to the urban retail spectacle.

I wandered around the shops at the end of the day and no-one appeared to be spending much money; just hanging out like me. is the uk turning into a debt ridden society of cappucino consumers? time for some local distinctiveness I think and time for some radical thinking about placemaking, locality and building capacity for local businesses and difference. otherwise we will all just be living in super-surveillance airport liminal space or in the ghetto, with not much in between. And what is happening in New Orleans is a huge and scary lesson in why there's a need for social infrastructure, social policy, and why the unbridled market will never provide on its own.

Some more festivals for 'Journeys Across My City'

The two Journeys Across My City - Buenos Aires films have been selected for three more film festivals, so you can catch them in lots of different places. They are

5-8 Sept 2005 Talent Circle Super Shorts Festival, London

September 19-23, 2005: 8th edition Auburn International Film and Video Festival for Children and Young Adults, Sydney, Australia

October 2005: Document3 Human Rights International Film Festival, Glasgow

You can also view them online, if you have access to RealMedia, on
UNESCO's website

Zero Degrees

My colleague and friend Tim Lawrence writes on Khan/Sawhney/Gormley/Larbi Cherrkauoui's Zero Degrees. Everyone I've spoken to who went to see this says that it is absolutely of its time. If anyone wants an argument for the absolute relevance of the performing arts in a fragmented and dangerous world, this work sounds like it's it....

http://www.sadlerswells.com/whats_on/2005_2006/zero.asp

IKEA

Wandering round IKEA looking for mattress covers at 9.30pm on a Saturday night is a waste of a life.

urban tapestries

Interesting blog of research project exploring social production of knowledge, informal knowledge generation and sharing, etc.

Applied Imagination

US based blog on 'applied imagination' - creativity in business and for non-profits, linked to the 'creative problem solving institute'.

'The Creative College' is published!

At last the book is out. The blurb on the back explains its content:

Creative partnership in education is increasingly being recognised as an inspirational and effective way of teaching and learning. This timely book describes some successful initiatives and suggests how schools, colleges, universities and arts organisations can make such partnerships work.

Arts partnership has been strongly developed at Newham Sixth Form College (NewVIc), a large and diverse sixth form college in east London. The case studies by teachers and artists who developed the projects show how they collaborate with each other and with arts organisations to create a culture of artistic aspiration and success for their students. The contributors analyse what is needed to make such partnerships a success and explore the issues and challenges faced by teachers and artists who want to collaborate in this way.

The idea of creative partnership is firmly located in the context of debates about urban schooling, 'the learning city' and community regeneration. The book weaves together the voices of students, teachers and artists working to create a shared culture for learning.

The Creative College will be of interest to students, teachers and practitioners in education, arts education, community arts and community development.

The contributors are Andrew Blake, Kelly Davidson, Rachel Fell, Sid Hughes and Jo Parkes, and the editor, Graham Jeffery, who was arts research and development manager at NewVIc and is currently seconded to the University of East London as Programme Leader for Performing Arts.

You can order the book from amazon by clicking on the link on the right...

Journeys Across My City at the G8 Summit

We have just heard that the films 'Journeys Across My City' that Graham worked on in Buenos Aires, with students from east London and Redcurrent Films are to be screened in the mobile, solar powered cinema outside the G8 Summit at Gleneagles.

Richard Florida

Richard Florida makes my feeble attempts at self-publicity pale into insignificance.

Praxis

More on praxis from that excellent site, the encyclopaedia of informal education.

And a simple definition of the idea of praxis in education as 'conscientization' is here.

del.icio.us

I am really enjoying this social bookmarking thing. Endless fascination from simple interactive listmaking. The dominant posts are still on the nerdy side but nonetheless there are all kinds of interesting things out there to discover.

Some interesting websites on design, health and ecology

http://www.design21.dundee.ac.uk/home.html

http://www.designandhealth.com/

http://www.nature-inspired.org/

http://www.thedesignclinic.co.uk/default.php