Face Value by James Clegg

James Clegg was seeking people interested in talking about someone who has influenced them. Taking the form of a five minute presentation based upon a visual aid, such as a photograph or drawing, the presentation should emphasise the knowledge that person passed on to you and can be based upon a personal relation or a famous individual who has inspired you. Read more…

An Intelligent Way of Working: People Know How by Alex Dunedin

Ive been working with Glenn Liddall and People Know How for a little over a year now, and I have been impressed at the way he, and they, are working.  When Glenn approached me originally with ideas for collaboration and a new way of working towards goals which made a positive difference to various stakeholders (rather than a single group), I was interested to see what he meant and what the realities were.

Glenn was speaking about an integrated way of working which identified and valued the qualities which people have, and then taking them into a setting whereby they developed skills around a real life framework to tackle various socially pertinent issues.

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Edinburgh Short Film Festival 2016: Call For Entries

The Edinburgh Short Film Festival is now open for submission for 2016 and we’ll be screening the best in contemporary short film in Scotland’s beautiful & ancient capital city in October 2016. This year we’re planning some exciting collaboration projects from working with Japan’s biggest short film festival, Short Shorts Film Festival to curating short film programmes for Hidden Door in May, Edinburgh’s own, unique, arts festival. Read more…

Maurice MacLean and the Red Cross by Colin MacLean

On 15 February 2016, my dad (Maurice MacLean) died aged 96. On 17 April our son Simon will do the Great Edinburgh Run to raise money for his grandpa’s favourite charity, the Red Cross. Can I explain the background?

Maurice always hated what war did to people, but he also believed that sometimes war was necessary to confront a great evil. He summed up his thinking in a talk he gave long after the war:

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Trade School: Offering Learning Through Barter by Colin Hynson

A few months ago a group of students gathered in the centre of London to take a short course on portrait photography. The students were taken through the workings of the camera, the use of settings, different kinds of lighting and tips and techniques for creating a portrait. The students did not have make a cash payment for the course but the teacher did not go away empty–handed either.

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Introducing AfroFutures by Florence Okoye

In the field of Complexity studies, one of the characteristics of a complex system is that it will often show sudden discontinuities, tipping points after long periods of apparent stability. For those of us interested in the way societies adapt and evolved, it might be something of a comfort to think that radical change is indeed a possibility, regardless of how dominant and intrusive the current status quo seems to be.
This isn’t a particularly unique insight, but it comes up whenever I start thinking about the way new trends bubble up out of nowhere and are sometimes able to leave a trace after the inevitable denouement. I like to think that the resurgent interest in the genre of AfroFuturism is one such trend – one that will leave a more interesting world of genre fiction, media and even technology in its wake. Read more…