Saturday 10 January 2009

Hold the front page!

Gosh... That's been quite a week! And not over yet, by a long shot.


For starters, it's not often one of my talks gets a plug on the front page of the London Lite...


Article about Temporary School of Thought

From column 4: 'The squat's website, temporaryschool.org lists sessions including "labyrinth building with Steph" tomorrow followed by "deschooling society".' Guess I'd better get on with writing that talk, then!


The Temporary School of Thought also featured in Friday's Guardian, while Vinay's video of it has been picked up by the Evening Standard. Check it out:



Congratulations to the organisers on successfully getting the court case adjourned! Another two weeks in the building is going to be huge, if the amount of exciting stuff that's gone on in the past few days is anything to go by. I know they have mixed feelings about all this media interest - and particularly the focus on the property value, which is a bit of a distraction - but as an ex-journalist, I've got to say the coverage is really about as positive as I've ever seen for a story about a squat, once you get past the headlines. And most of the comments on the Standard site are very positive.


Speaking of comments, thanks for all the thoughtful responses to my questions about meditation. I'll take some time to think about them and come back to the subject. (I'm feeling a lot clearer about the "radio in your head" stuff after the Meditation & Magic session at TSoT the other night - thanks, Bad Swami!)


Had a brilliant time this morning at the Tuttle Club. It was my first time at this regular Friday gathering, which you get to by turning up at the back door of the ICA. Met some fascinating people and had three hours of back-to-back great conversation. For example, I spent ages chatting to Chris Unitt who runs the Created in Birmingham blog - exactly the kind of thing I wish had existed for the Creative Industries Quarter in Sheffield in my days there. (Oh, and if you find Melanie Phillips as unpleasant as I do, please vote for Created in Birmingham in the 2008 Weblog Awards - they've just overtaken her in the running for Best UK Blog, but it's a close run thing!)


Finally, I couldn't put the week to bed without mentioning the amazing morris men and women who swarmed through School of Everything over the last few days! We started out responding to the news stories about the gloomy prognosis for this most English of traditions - but soon discovered that reports of its death had been greatly exaggerated. The energy, enthusiasm and sense of fun that Claire and I found in the response to our little campaign made it one of my favourite weeks since School of Everything launched.


Right, time to start writing that talk. If you're in London and free, then I hope to see you at 5pm tomorrow at 39A Clarges Mews, off Curzon Street, Mayfair. There may be some surprises. (For those out of town/busy/lazy, video will be available next week.)

5 comments:

Chris Unitt said...

Hey Dougald, really good to meet you too - I've been showing around that video of the Dr Who morris-dancing.

Cheers for the mention of the voting too.

Nick Herman said...

Awesome.

That girl is adorable.

Dougald Hine said...

@Nick - yeah, the whole group behind the Temporary School are great - young, creative, full of energy and not caught up in the internal political disputes that have limited some of the anarchist social centres I've been involved with before. What they're doing is really inspiring.

My talk on Saturday was packed and seemed to go down well. I'll blog the video footage here once it's up online.

Tim Hodgens said...

Hey Dougald,

Take a look at: http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2009/01/industrial-education.html

Right up your line.

Tim

Dougald Hine said...

Cheers, Tim! Definitely up my line. I'm planning a post pulling together some of the interesting conversations about the future of education I've come across recently. Will try and get that written up this week.

Meanwhile, more examples are extremely welcome!

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