Gonna be spending some time this evening thinking about New Year’s Resolutions/Aims. The timing is as arbitrary as any other timing but we really should take any opportunity we get to reflect and redouble our efforts to live better. Â Maybe I’ll write about some specific resolutions after I’ve talked it over with the family, […]
Author Archives: Steve
Fathers’ Day : A Story
It’s Fathers’ day, and I guess like many people, my dad is someone who has variably inspired me, infuriated me, looked after me, annoyed me and… well, fatherhood is complicated, right? So instead of getting too deep into that, I’m going to tell you a story about the coolest thing my dad ever did. It […]
Social Media at #TheDWord – Collectively Asking Better Questions
Last monday, I had the privilege of helping to plan and implement a social media strategy for a conference on Diversity in Theatre and Live Art, called The D Word, hosted and planned by nitroBEAT. (the hashtag was #TheDWord on Twitter if you want to have a dig through the archive, and nitroBEAT’s twitter account is […]
Bending Towards Justice.
MLK paraphrased Theodore Parker when he said “The arc of the Moral Universe Is long, but It bends toward Justice” Parker’s whole quote feels a little more fitting now, a little more shaky, a little less certain, but full of faith that good will out. He was talking about the abolishionist cause, still in the […]
How Not To Organise A Protest (Loretta-Aid: The World’s Most Unpopular Petition)
Like many other people, I was deeply concerned when at the beginning of August, The Daily Telegraph brought it to our attention that many of the Chief Executives in the UK’s biggest charities (specifically those that make up the DEC – Disasters & Emergencies Committee) were being paid 6 figure salaries, and that the number […]
Thoughts on Russia, Homophobia and Protest
OK, interesting stuff brewing over the response to the Russian govt’s hideous new anti-gay laws. The consensus is, of course, that they are an horrific human rights abuse, and we need to do whatever we can to help change the minds of the Russian authorities. However, the mechanism is a bit more hotly debated. Stephen […]
The Death Of Margaret Thatcher
I posted this over on Facebook, but that’ll vanish, and lots of people aren’t on FB, so I’ll put it here too, in case it’s useful. What a weird day. Thatcher dead. I’ve long wondered what today would feel like. I can’t celebrate anyone’s death, but there’s a weird mix of catharsis that the architect […]
Diaspora – A New Way To Do Social Media?
It’s been around for a while, but it feels like the time for Diaspora is now. It started with a Kickstarter project that aimed to raise $10K but actually made $200K, and the basic idea is that it will eventually be a fully self-hostable social network – instead of everything being a on centrally owned/controlled […]
What Is Amplified?
If you follow me on Twitter, or we’re friends on Facebook, you may have seen me mention Amplified over the years. We started Amplified almost in 2008, but I still quite often get asked what it’s all about, so I thought I’d write a post about what we do (this was first written in 2012, […]
Leadership, Mentoring, Art and Music…
Last week, I attended the Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s ArtWorks launch, which is focused on “Leading Through Practice: Artist-led Leadership in Participatory Settings.†It was an amazing day (see the liveblog at amplified11.com/ArtWorksPHF ) and certain themes emerged, particularly as they relate to support structures for artists. The themes of sustainability and cross-disciplinary learning/practice came up […]